Commons Day

The Club played this year’s Commons Day the afternoon of Saturday, August 1, at High Cedars — a public course, first tee open to all comers, and nothing but the green fee to get on it. That’s the whole tribute: golf’s birthright is land that belonged to everyone, from the links of St Andrews and Leith to the American municipals that carried the inheritance west, and Commons Day marks it by playing on exactly that kind of ground rather than behind a gate.

Josh and Dickie, friends of the Club, joined the round — proof enough that a public first tee doesn’t ask who you belong to before it lets you play.