- Prior to 1891, if you can believe it, golf courses didn’t have a standard size cup.

Meaning as you traveled across Scotland prior to 1891 you might encounter holes of only 4 inches in diameter or those that were 5 1/2”. On top of this, you were just as likely to find that the golf holes got bigger as the day went on.

Why? Because in the days before wooden tees, our golfing forefathers teed the ball up on wet sand. And before the invention of the teeing area (we used to tee off within a clublength of the hole), the best place to get wet sand was at the bottom of the golf cup. So as the day grew old the hole might grow bigger and bigger.

The first golf links to solve for this issue was Old Musselburgh Links. Royal Musselburgh hired a man by the name of Robert Gray to find a solution. In 1824 Gray, who clearly was a crafty person, realized that he could utilize the common Musselburgh drainpipe as a liner for the golf hole. How big was the Musselburgh Drainpipe…I bet you can guess. That’s right… 4 1/4” in diameter. Gray crafted not only the drainpipe but an amazing contraption to cut new golf holes (see photo).

What is crazy is that the rest of golf world took another 67 years to catch up to the 4.25” diameter. The R&A standardized the hole size in 1891 (31 years after the first Open)