Our Green and Gothic Home
The joyous daybreak’s shimmering light
Reveals a blessed, stirring sight,
Fair Garden City, beaming bright!
Our green and gothic home.
The world may clamor all around,
But tranquil solace have we found.
Where Emmet first broke fertile ground,
And Travis’s name is renowned,
Now countless champions are crowned.
Our green and gothic home.
So out and back the players go
Through banshee winds that howl and blow,
Just like a century ago,
The greatest amateurs convene
Where golden fescue waves serene
On either side of fairways green
‘Neath blue skies sparkling crystalline.
Our green and gothic home.
And at eighteen the story’s told
That Travis dug too deep a hole
And lost an Amateur of old .
But if you need a closing par,
And hit your final shot too far
Chef Tony’s voice yells from the bar:
“Your ball went in my vichyssoise!”
Our green and gothic home.
From Auchterlonie’s Haskell Ball
To Billy Edwards, you’ll recall,
The last member to win it all,
There’s Travis with his long cigar
And Eger, Burns, and Zahringer,
Rejoice the glory of their name,
And toast the virtue of the game,
100 years of rousing cheers,
Of frothy beers and smiling peers,
Of hearts sincere and friendships dear,
Our green and gothic home.
Tonight the troops of angels bright,
An inextinguishable light
Of halos, wings, and Holy Might,
Shall play beneath the starry night,
Our green and gothic home.
The Grand Old Club, The Grand Old Man,
The Grand Old Amateur still stands.
So raise your voice and clap your hands!
It’s what our legacy commands.
Our green and gothic home.
And so, “so long,” but not “farewell,”
For soon again the cheers shall swell
Through every dale, dune, and dell,
As evening’s embers’ last faint glow
Fills full our hearts and fires our souls,
We’ll reminisce the story told
From holy whispers long ago:
“Within the city’s bustle lies
A gleaming jewel in glad sunrise,
Our emerald ‘neath the blissful skies,
Our green and gothic home…
Our green and gothic home…
Our green and gothic home.”
NOTES
1. Written in 2009 to celebrate the Travis Invitational tournament as it approached its 100th anniversary. Alfred Lord Tennyson inspired this choice of meter and rhyme scheme, with a nod to Percy Byssche Shelley again, as well. For those of you scoring at home, Garden City Golf Club opened in 1899.
2. Devereux Emmet was the original architect of Garden City Golf Club.
3. Travis, a member of Garden City, won the 1904 British Amateur – the first foreigner to do so – and later oversaw major changes to Garden City, including deepening the bunkers and adding more interior contour to the greens. Formerly the Spring Invitational, the tournament is not the Travis Invitational. Travis won this tournament nine times.
Incidentally, for all you grammar junkies, the word “Travis’s” is spelled correctly. If you look at your Strunk and White – which no American should be without – you will see they list “form the singular possessive of all nouns with apostrophe-s, even if the noun ends in the letter “S.” So it’s “Tiger Woods’s ball.” The two main corollaries are for (1) ancient names like “Jesus” and “Isis;” and (2) where the noun being modified also ends in “S,” like “Barry Bonds’ steroids. Since we elide the middle “S” when we speak, we omit it in writing. This footnote was brought to you by the letter “S” and the number “59.”
4. The Putter from Schenectady was what Travis used to win the 1904 British Amateur. A replica is given to the winner of the Travis Invitational.
5. Travis lost the semi-final of the 1908 U.S. Amateur at Garden City to J.D. Travers when he failed twice to escape the coffin bunker. It’s said he dug his own grave deepening that bunker during his renovations.
6. Scotsman Laurie Auchterlonie won the 1902 U.S. Open at Garden City and was the first person to win using the Haskell Ball.
7. Edwards won in 1970 while an active member of the club. For those asking, “Wait a minute…what about Tim Schmitt? He’s a member and he won in 2003.” Tim Schmitt didn’t win the Travis while an active member. Schmitt won in 2003, but didn’t join Garden City Go0lf Club until years later.
8. All are former champions of the Travis Invitational. Eger won four times, including three in a row from 1999 to 2001.
9. When reading the poem aloud, I find that repeating “our green and gothic home” three times, with the proper inflections – warmly, then with a penultimate feel, almost like a question, then warmly again – works best.
