The Scots Know Golf and Bargains : A $100 Investment Brought Couple 10,000 Free Rounds

Angus and Violet MacMaster are as Scottish as Robert Burns and eating haggis and scones.

The trill of Angus’ burr is thick enough to slice through an early morning mist in Moray Firth.

When a bargain looms, Angus and his bride of 56 years strike.

The most memorable happened 50 years ago.

For half a century Angus, 82, and Vi, 78, have been playing golf on the city links here at least four times a week. It has cost them about one penny greens fees for every outing.

One of golf’s greatest bargains.

Regular players pay $10 for 18 holes.

Portland’s four municipal golf courses rank among the most scenic and challenging in the nation. West Delta, designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr., played host to the 1979 National Public Links championship.

Fifty years ago Angus, Vi and 198 other Portland devotees of the fairways, greens and roughs saved the courses from going under.

They were rewarded with lifetime memberships--never a fee to play on any of the city courses as long as they lived.

“It was the depth of the Great Depression. The city had to pay off a $20,000 debt on the golf course property. If city fathers failed to meet the obligation, the courses were to be abandoned,” explains Vi.

In 1935, $20,000 was a sizeable sum.

So was the $100 that each of 200 Portland golfers subscribed toward the reduction of a capital obligation. In return, lifetime passes to the city’s courses were given to each of the golfers.

“They let us pay $10 a month for 10 months. We hashed it over for a long time before making a final decision,” recalls Angus.

“We thought something could happen. We could break a leg and never get our money out of it. But we took a chance.”

(They got their money’s worth and then some. Playing four times a week adds up to 200 times a year. That’s 10,000 games of golf in 50 years, at a cost of $100 equals about one cent for each outing.)

Angus was a 32-year-old mechanic making 75 cents an hour ($30 a week) Vi was 28, a legal secretary earing $75 a month.

“We were paying $15 a month rent and $20 a month ($10 each) to save the golf courses. Our friends thought we were crazy. It wasn’t easy,” says Vi.

Neither broke a leg in all this time. Vi was Portland’s 1938 Woman’s Public Links champion. The top of the couple’s piano is covered with trophies won over the years at the municipal courses.

Eighteen of the 200 golfers who paid $100 in 1935 and were given the lifetime memberships are still playing, the youngest, Rick Cooney, 65, the oldest Ted Westling, 84.

Angus and Vi are the only original married couple. There are two other couples with life memberships: one woman whose first husband died and who remarried a golfer with one of the passes, and another woman who was divorced and remarried another player with a life membership.

The MacMasters were both born in Scotland. Angus lived in Motherwell until he was 20 and then moved to Portland. Vi was 13 when she left Aberdeen.

“That’s why I’m much easier to understand than Angus. I wasn’t in the old country near as long as he was,” she explains. “Half the time I can’t understand him either. His burr is so thick.”

They met at the Highlander Games in Portland and were married in 1929. They have no children.

Angus and Vi walk. They don’t use carts. He usually plays with his cronies, she with long-time women friends. “Some times Angus will condescend to play with me if he can’t find anybody else,” Vi says.

“When we put up the $100 each, we were only paying 25 cents to play 18 holes. That $100 was a lot of money then. It was a gut feeling I had as a Scotsman knowing a bargain when one comes along,” Angus says. “I can truthfully say it’s the best investment Vi and I have ever made.”

With that he knocked the ball nearly 200 yards straight down the fairway as he and Vi started their latest round on the free tickets.

They both shoot in the low 90s. In their prime, they shot in the high 70s or low 80s.

“We ought to be pretty good, you know,” Angus insists. “The game’s in our blood. Golfing started in Scotland long before Columbus discovered this country. We’ve both played the Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St. Andrews.”

Angus MacMasters, 82, and his wife, Violet, 78,, get set to tee off at Rose City course in Portland, Ore., one of four they play free for life.