Early golf courses were basic affairs with little uniformity and how many holes each course had depended on the topography, with holes cut wherever there was a suitable area of level ground in the linksland. Nor were there the specifically constructed tee boxes of modern layouts; instead these pioneering golfers teed up within a club length of the previous hole. The hole itself was cut out by hand by the forefathers of what we now view as greenkeepers but who were called ‘hole cutters’.
The cutting of the hole was done with a trowel. Thus the size of a hole could vary not only between courses but across a course. It could also increase during the day. Tee shots were played off a pyramid of sand and an obvious source of sand on a course laid on sandy soil was from inside the hole itself. Players putting their hands into the hole to scoop out sand invariably meant the hole got damaged and enlarged during the course of play.
