Golf comes to Kerrville -- 100 years ago

Kerrville's Scott Schreiner Golf Course in 1924.
The clubhouse is in the background.
Click on any image to enlarge.

Golfing in Kerrville turns 100 this month, and the city is planning a celebration at the Scott Schreiner Municipal Golf Course to mark the occasion.

One journalist covered the new golf course back in 1924: J. E. Grinstead. His October, 1924 edition of the Grinstead’s Graphic Magazine is devoted to the new golf course.

"Some of the Graphic's readers complained last month," Grinstead writes, "because I used a word several times that the preachers talk about every Sunday. Well, you won't find it in this number. The worst word I'll use is Golf."

The little booklet measures about 6 3/4 by 10 inches and had, at one time, 32 pages. My copy is missing the middle four pages, and is thus incomplete. It is illustrated with twelve photographs in the story pages, plus five more in the advertisements. (As you know, I'm particularly keen on old Kerrville and Kerr County images.) Like most of Grinstead's magazines, this one includes some "booster" copy, extolling the unblemished virtues of our neck of the woods, and also a short piece of fiction.

Back to his coverage of golf:

"...Golf has come to Kerrville. It seems strange that in this mountain retreat, where so short a time ago smoke was rising from the campfires of the Comanche, such a modern thing as golf links should be at hand. Fifty years ago [from 1921, that is, 1871], a golf course here in these mountains would have been quite a curiosity. Yes, and fifty years ago a woman with bobbed hair, or a man wearing bell-bottomed pants would have been shot for a new kind of varmint. Fifty years ago, if just one automobile had run through Kerr County at night, the population would have been reduced by those who broke their necks trying to get away.

"The world has progressed, and Kerrville has progressed with it. As a step in that progress, the Kerrville Chamber of Commerce, the liveliest civic body I know anything about, decided that Kerrville needed a Country Club and a Golf Course. When the Kerrville Chamber of Commerce decides that their town needs a thing, they go get it."

Looking over the photographs, I believe this "country club" and its golf course were spread out over the same acreage as today's Scott Schreiner Municipal Golf Course. Of the images in the little magazine, I have the negatives to two, which helps me know approximately how old they are.

The golf course had been completed only a few months before the "Golf Number" was published. The early board "of governors" of the Kerrville Country Club were Scott Schreiner, president; E. Galbraith, vice-president; Cecil Robinson, secretary; A.C. Schreiner, Jr., chairman of the golf committee; Ally Bietel, chairman of the finance committee; E. H. Prescott, chairman of the entertainment committee; Dr. J. D. Jackson, chairman of the house committee; Dr. A. A. Roberts, chairman greens committee; and S. H. Huntington, A. B. Williamson, and Hal Peterson rounding out that first board.

"Through the course runs Quinlan Creek," Grinstead wrote, "a brawling mountain brook, which affords no less than seven water hazards. No matter where the player may look, he is confronted by natural scenery, mountain, valley and stream. This sporty nine-hole course was designed by John Bredemus, well-known golf engineer and architect. The designs were carried out under the supervision of O. J. Dobkins, who is at present professional in charge of the course. Mr. Dobkins was assisted in the work by Hal Peterson."

Grinstead predicted, accurately, that other courses would be built here.

Happy 100^th birthday to the Scott Schreiner Municipal Golf Course!

Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who has hit more than a few golf balls in the water at our local golf course. This column originally appeared in the Kerr County Lead October 3, 2024.

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