MGA Founding Fathers (2019)

On March 31, 1897, a group of middle-aged sportsmen gathered at Delmonico’s restaurant in Manhattan at the suggestion of the Green Committee of Saint Andrew’s Golf Club in Yonkers.  Representatives of twenty-four clubs (plus two – Shinnecock Hills and Englewood – that were “represented in spirit”) attended the meeting, whose purpose was to explore creating an organization for “promotion of the interests of golf locally, and the arrangements of dates for open tournaments among the members, in consultation with the United States Golf Association.”

The upshot of that meeting was selection of a committee to determine the role of such an organization, to be called the Metropolitan League of Golf Clubs.  The five men chosen represented clubs scattered across the Met Area: Daniel Chauncey, Dyker Meadow (Brooklyn), Oliver W. Bird, Meadow Brook (Long Island), Grenville Kane, Tuxedo (Westchester), Richard H. Williams, Morris County (New Jersey), and T. Hope Simpson, Staten Island Cricket.  They were all prosperous, though some were more prosperous than the others.  Kane was a great-grandson of John Jacob Astor; an equestrian and yachtsman; the first resident of the Tuxedo Park Colony; he would go on to be the Chairman of the New York Public Library, Chairman of the Board of the Erie Railroad, the dean of American book collectors, and fleet captain of the New York Yacht Club.  Chauncey, son of a founder of D. & M. Chauncey Real Estate in Brooklyn, would go on to be president of both the MGA (1905-06) and the USGA (1907-08).  Williams would eventually serve as president of both the New York Tennis and Racquet Club and the Westminster Kennel Club.

Two weeks later, back at Delmonico’s, the Committee presented a draft of the constitution and a set of bylaws to the 19 men, representing 18 clubs, who attended.   With their approval, the Metropolitan Golf Association was officially formed on April 14, 1897.  Its territory consisted of the whole of Long Island, and a radius of 55 miles from New York City.  (The original limit was to be 50 miles, but it was extended to include Fairfield County Golf Club, now Greenwich Country Club, at the suggestion of the Fairfield County G.C. representative in attendance.)  It was the third such association in the country, following the USGA (December 22, 1894) and the Philadelphia Golf Association (February 5, 1897).  The twenty-six charter members of the MGA were roughly one-quarter the number of member clubs of the USGA.

A month later, the MGA issued its first slate of open tournaments, to be held at thirteen clubs including Shinnecock Hills, Baltusrol, Tuxedo, Essex Country, Queens County (now Nassau), Westchester, Meadow Brook, and Saint Andrew’s.  Of the twenty-six charter clubs, eighteen are still in existence, five of them under different names.  The clubs were charged $5.00 annual dues.