A dedication to golf in print

A slice of golfing literature / Part 31: Alastair Johnson may well be the ultimate golfing bibliophile, as Gary Moran discovers.

If you have managed to acquire, let alone read, each of the books that have featured in this column over the last 30 weeks then you may think you are on the way to a significant collection of golf literature. Think again.

Alastair Johnston, who is joint chief executive and head of golf operations at IMG was listed among the sport's 10 most influential people in last month's Golf Digest ranking. When it comes to collecting golf books he is the undisputed number one.

Johnston finished his internship with IMG in 1969 and returned to his native Scotland taking with him 30 books on clients Arnold Palmer and Gary Player that had been collecting dust in a corner. The collection has since grown to around 13,000 books and periodicals which are shelved upstairs in Johnston's presumably large house in Cleveland.

"It's the best private golf library in the world," according to Rand Jerris who is historian with the United States Golf Association which enjoys a friendly rivalry with Johnston when it comes to acquiring rare works. "Alastair has outbid us at auction, but we've outbid him on other things," says Jerris. "In a lot of ways, our relationship is far more co-operative than competitive. We share catalogues. He's very forthright about what he's got and what has come in."

Johnston's current catalogue is a book in itself, running to 333 pages. His career with IMG has taken him around the world and he has thumbed the yellow pages from New York to Los Angeles and from Sydney to Johannesburg searching out books in second-hand stores. He even found a gem 15 years ago down the street from IMG headquarters in Cleveland, The Art of Golf, which he assumed was from 1889 and published in Britain.

"I saw it in the window and thought, 'Geez, this guy doesn't know what it is'," recalls Johnston. Turned out it was an American edition, published in New York in 1892. That made it the first golf book published in the United States, although it wasn't an indigenous American book like the 1893 Spalding Golf Guide which he already had.

"The guy wanted $50 and I ended up paying $30. I'd pay $2,000 for it now," confesses Johnston, who was mentored in his early years of collecting by the late Joe Murdoch, one of the founders of the Golf Collectors Society. Murdoch provided contacts and the tricks of the trade, although Johnston relied as much on his own instincts.

"The only advice I didn't take from him was when he said, 'If you can't get something at the right price don't worry about it. Another one will come along.' I never believed that. A lot of stuff I bought never did come around."

One such item was The Goff which Thomas Mathison wrote in 1743 as the first book devoted to the game. Johnston doesn't reveal how much he paid for it although he recently turned down an offer of $100,000 to sell. "Unless I'm down to my last shilling, I'm not going to sell it," he claims.

Among Johnston's treasured items is an original copy of the 1457 Scottish Acts of Parliament when the King banned golf because he feared it was taking time away from archery practice and ultimately Johnston would love to see his private library move to Scotland. It is unlikely there will ever be another collection like it.

"It will be close to impossible to do this again. Firstly because of the price although somebody very rich could do it. Secondly, finding all these books. Some of these are one and two of a kind."

Most of them he already owns.