Spring is good for outdoor sport recreation

Spring is good for outdoor sport recreation

Sports enthusiasts who enjoyed playing cricket and golf, as well as biking and walking, began local clubs dedicated to supporting these hobbies. As one club’s popularity began to fade out, another one quickly took its place as Wayne residents easily found themselves drawn to the newest spring sports “fad.” The April columns penned by Patterson Ping G15 Series Review in 1949 and 1950 take readers back in time to the start of these clubs.Writing about the Golf Club, Patterson shared these quotes from George W. Schultz, who was instrumental in the establishment of the golf club. “One Sunday in the spring of 1896 A.J.D. (Tony) Peterson came to my house carrying a small white ball and a club with a bent iron on its end and, chuckling, he began tapping the ball on the lawn. He said he had been to Devon the day before by invitation of a friend who introduced him to a Scotch game called golf, started by summer residents of Devon Inn,” began Schultz's story.

In addition to the sports played at the Merrivale Club, many of its members “took to early Sunday-morning hikes, the group eventually being known as ‘The Walkers.’ Among them were David Knickerbacker Boyd, the architect, Billy Brown, son of the then publisher of the Wayne Times, Charles Gleason, Lee Harrison, Bill Everly and the Schultz brothers," wrote Patterson.“The rambles of these hikers took them cross-country towards King of Prussia, a section that was mostly woods and farms then. If unobserved, they were not above taking a little refreshment from stone spring houses in the way of ‘a dipper of rich cream off a crock in the cold spring water!’” reported Patterson.