Roll It Back Productions

Roll It Back Productions
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Welcome to Roll it Back Productions, where golf history comes alive. We explore the golden age of golf, when hickory shafts, persimmon woods, and balata balls defined the sport. Before launch monitors and 350-yard drives, there was shotmaking, course design, and a deep connection between player and course. Each episode uncovers forgotten champions, the origins of iconic courses, and traditions that quietly disappeared as technology reshaped the game. If you love golf lore, vintage equipment, course architecture, and believe the soul of the game lives in its history, you're in the right place!

Episodes

  1. The Great Triumvirate - the Harry Vardon, James Braid, and JH Taylor Story

    May 6

    The Great Triumvirate - the Harry Vardon, James Braid, and JH Taylor Story

    Twenty-one Open Championships between 1894 and 1914. Three guys won sixteen of them. Harry Vardon, James Braid, and J.H. Taylor were three working-class kids born within twelve months of each other, from three different corners of the British Isles. For two decades they owned professional golf, traveled together as a roadshow, and quietly built the entire business of the modern sport from scratch. This episode tells their story: a Jersey gardener's son who invented the grip you probably use today, a silent Scottish joiner who became one of the most prolific course architects in history, and a Devon laborer's kid who founded the PGA and forced golf to let professionals through the front door. Along the way: the 1896 Muirfield playoff that tilted the sport on its axis, Vardon's coast-to-coast American tour that rewrote how an entire country swung a club, the 13-and-12 exhibition rout that turned golf into a spectacle, tuberculosis, and the 1913 U.S. Open at Brookline, where a 20-year-old amateur named Francis Ouimet beat Vardon and Ted Ray in a playoff. You've seen the movie — The Greatest Game Ever Played — but the real story is bigger and stranger than the film, and Vardon's the one it leaves behind. -- In this episode: The world of golf before them Three boys: Jersey, Earlsferry, Devon Vardon breaks through at Muirfield, 1896 Braid joins them The rivalry that wasn't America discovers Vardon Francis Ouimet at Brookline, The war and the fade The legacy -- golf history, harry vardon, james braid, jh taylor, j.h. taylor, the great triumvirate, great triumvirate golf, vardon grip, open championship history, british open history, 1896 muirfield, francis ouimet, ouimet brookline, 1913 us open, brookline 1913, the greatest game ever played, greatest game ever played movie, ted ray golfer, golf documentary, history of golf, professional golf history, vardon trophy, gleneagles, carnoustie, royal jersey, westward ho, royal north devon, bernard darwin, old tom morris, young tom morris, scottish golf, victorian golf, golf in the 1900s, hickory golf, gutta percha, pga history, roll it back, golf storytelling, golf legends, six open championships, edwardian golf-- Thank you to our sponsor Birdie Social Club for making this video possible. Birdie Social Club is the ultimate FREE golf achievement tracker who want to celebrate and every great shot and understand their game at a deeper level. Track every birdie, eagle and ace! Track every course you have played! Analyze your game! Whether you just sank your first birdie, or you are chasing your next ace, Birdie Social Club is the App for you! Download in the app store https://apps.apple.com/us/app/birdie-...-- Roll It Back. Golf history.

    32 min

  2. Apr 20

    Harry Vardon and the Jersey Boys

    Before Harry Vardon won six Open Championships, he was a barefoot kid on a tiny island in the English Channel, hitting marbles with a homemade club. He never had a formal golf lesson. Neither did Ted Ray, Tom Vardon, or any of the other boys from Grouville who would go on to reshape the sport. In this episode, we tell the story of the Jersey School — not a school at all, but a group of working-class caddies at Royal Jersey Golf Club who taught themselves the game by watching, copying, and competing against each other on scraps of common land. Out of that caddie yard came six Open Championships, two U.S. Opens, the grip most golfers still use today, and a generation of professionals who carried the game from Britain to America and beyond. This is the story of how modern professional golf was invented, not at St Andrews, but by boys standing outside the ropes, holding someone else's bag, and watching closely because watching was the only way in. --- Harry Vardon, Ted Ray, Jersey golf, Open Championship history, golf history, Royal Jersey Golf Club, Vardon grip, 1913 US Open, Francis Ouimet, Brookline, Grouville, caddie history, Roll it Back, golden age of golf, early professional golf, links golf, golf documentary --- Thank you to our sponsor Birdie Social Club for making this video possible. Birdie Social Club is the ultimate FREE golf achievement tracker who want to celebrate and every great shot and understand their game at a deeper level. Track every birdie, eagle and ace! Analyze your game! Whether you just sank your first birdie, or you are chasing your next ace, Birdie Social Club is the App for you! Download in the app store https://apps.apple.com/us/app/birdie-social-club/id6753883307

    23 min

  3. Apr 2

    Marion Hollins - The Woman the Masters wants you to forget

    This is the story they don't tell you during the Masters broadcast. Marion Hollins won the 1921 U.S. Women's Amateur, played polo on men's teams, raced cars, and marched with suffragettes. She hired Alister MacKenzie and built Cypress Point, where she created the famous 16th hole by hitting a ball across 200 yards of Pacific Ocean when every man in the room said it was impossible. She opened Pasatiempo and invited Bobby Jones to the grand opening. Jones met MacKenzie there, at her course, on her invite, and hired him to design Augusta National. When MacKenzie couldn't visit the Augusta construction site, he wanted to send Marion to inspect it. Clifford Roberts, Augusta's co-founder, blocked her. Because she was a woman. MacKenzie wrote back: "I do not know of any man who has sounder ideas." Marion died broke at 51. Roberts then spent 45 years writing her out of Augusta's history. Her grave went unmarked for decades. In 2021, she was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame alongside Tiger Woods. Seventy-seven years late. This is the most important person in golf you've never heard of. The woman the Masters wants you to forget. Roll It Back — Golf History. --- To learn more about Marion Hollins, please visit the Marion Hollins Memorial Project https://www.marionhollins.org/ -- Thank you to our sponsor Birdie Social Club for making this video possible. Birdie Social Club is the ultimate FREE golf achievement tracker who want to celebrate and every great shot and understand their game at a deeper level. Track every birdie, eagle and ace! Analyze your game! Whether you just sank your first birdie, or you are chasing your next ace, Birdie Social Club is the App for you! Download in the app store https://apps.apple.com/us/app/birdie-...-- marion hollins, golf, augusta national, sexism, masters tournament controversy, who built augusta national, clifford roberts, marion hollins, augusta national, cypress point, 16th hole, women banned from augusta, golf history documentary, women in golf, augusta national history dark side, roll it back golf, bobby jones

    27 min

  4. Mar 26

    George Grant and the History of the Golf Tee

    For four hundred years, golfers started every hole by packing wet sand into a mound. Then George Grant, a Black dentist and Harvard professor, invented the wooden golf tee in 1899. He gave them away to friends and never made a cent. Twenty years later, Dr. William Lowell commercialized essentially the same design, painted it red, got Walter Hagen to endorse it, and the sand boxes disappeared forever. In this episode, we cover the messy origins of the tee shot, the parade of failed tee inventions, Grant's extraordinary life and overlooked legacy, Lowell's marketing genius, the cultural resistance that kept golfers building sand mounds long after a better option existed, and why the most disposable object in golf carries more history than almost anything else in your bag. --- Roll it Back is a show about the stories behind golf. New episodes on YouTube and wherever you listen to podcasts. --- -- Thank you to our sponsor Birdie Social Club for making this video possible. Birdie Social Club is the ultimate FREE golf achievement tracker who want to celebrate and every great shot and understand their game at a deeper level. Track every birdie, eagle and ace! Analyze your game! Whether you just sank your first birdie, or you are chasing your next ace, Birdie Social Club is the App for you! Download in the app store https://apps.apple.com/us/app/birdie-... -- golf tee history, who invented the golf tee, george grant golf tee, george franklin grant, reddy tee, william lowell golf tee, walter hagen, golf history, history of golf, golf equipment history, harvard dentist golf, sand tee golf, how golfers teed up before tees, golf tee invention, african american inventors, roll it back, golf documentary, tee box origin, golf tee patent

    34 min

  5. Mar 20

    Allan Robertson - Golf's First Pro and the Ball War That Changed Everything

    Allan Robertson was the first professional golfer, the best player of his era, and a ball maker whose family had been hand-stitching featheries for two hundred years. When a cheaper ball made from rubber tree sap showed up in 1848, Robertson bought up as many as he could find and burned them. That decision cost him his closest partnership, his apprentice Tom Morris, and kicked off the chain of events that created the Open Championship. In this episode, we cover the rise and fall of the featherie golf ball, Robertson's dominance in challenge-match golf, his falling out with Old Tom Morris, and how one man's fight against progress shaped the sport we know today. -- Roll it Back is a show about the stories behind golf. New episodes on YouTube and wherever you listen to podcasts. -- 0:00 — Cold Open 1:27 — St Andrews: The Center of the Universe 3:23 — The Featherie: Golf's First Ball 6:38 — Allan Robertson: The First Professional Golfer 11:32 — The Invincibles: Robertson & Morris 14:58 — The Guttie Arrives 19:28 — The Burning 23:37 — After the Fall 26:33 — The Birth of The Open Championship 30:30 — The Ball Keeps Changing 33:55 — Closing -- Thank you to our sponsor Birdie Social Club for making this video possible. Birdie Social Club is the ultimate FREE golf achievement tracker who want to celebrate and every great shot and understand their game at a deeper level. Track every birdie, eagle and ace! Analyze your game! Whether you just sank your first birdie, or you are chasing your next ace, Birdie Social Club is the App for you! Download in the app store https://apps.apple.com/us/app/birdie-...--

    36 min

  6. Mar 12

    Young Tom Morris - Golf's First Prodigy.... Golf's First Tragedy

    In 1870, a nineteen-year-old walked onto a Scottish links course and played a round of golf that wouldn't be matched for decades. Four consecutive Open Championships. The first recorded hole-in-one in tournament history. A level of dominance so complete that he won golf's only major trophy permanently, forcing the sport to create the Claret Jug as a replacement. His name was Tommy Morris. And by Christmas Day 1875, he was dead at twenty-four. This is the story of golf's first prodigy, the teenager who reinvented shot-shaping, the lofted approach, and the wedge game over a century before the modern tour existed. A story of genius, loss, and a legacy the sport almost forgot. Timestamps: 00:00 — A crowd gathers at Prestwick, 1870 01:28— St Andrews in the 1850s and the birth of professional golf 06:38 — A boy on the links: Young Tom's childhood at Prestwick 12:00 — The Belt: Young Tom wins his first Open at seventeen 21:37 — The Revolution: how Young Tom changed the way golf is played 25:45 — September 1875: Margaret, the telegram, and the end 30:50 — The Ghost on the Links: Young Tom's legacy and the Claret Jug 34:00 — Outro

    36 min

  7. Mar 5

    The Last Amateur to WIN the US Open - the Johnny Goodman Story

    In 1933, a 23-year-old orphan from Omaha, Nebraska did something no one has done since....he won the United States Open as an amateur. His name was Johnny Goodman. This is his story.From the meatpacking stockyards of South Omaha to the cover of TIME Magazine, Johnny Goodman's journey is one of the greatest untold stories in golf history. He beat Bobby Jones at 19. Won the U.S. Open at 23. Won the U.S. Amateur at 27. And never turned professional. 93 years later, no amateur has won the U.S. Open since. His name is Johnny Goodman, and I bet you haven't heard of him. CHAPTERS:0:00 - Cold Open0:51 - Where He Came From5:10 - Bobby Jones & The Day Johnny Shocked the World8:57 - America in 19339:35- Four Rounds That Changed History (1933 US Open)16:50 - Not Turning Pro20:15 - The 1937 US Amateur25:03 - Why It Matters27:10 - What we owe Johnny Goodman —📺 Welcome to Roll it Back Productions. Where golf history comes alive. We tell the untold stories of the game, from the legends you've never heard of to the forgotten moments that shaped the sport.🔔 Follow for more golf history— —Thank you to our sponsor Birdie Social Club for making this video possible. Birdie Social Club is the ultimate FREE golf achievement tracker who want to celebrate and every great shot and understand their game at a deeper level. Track every birdie, eagle and ace! Analyze your game! Whether you just sank your first birdie, or you are chasing your next ace, Birdie Social Club is the App for you! Download in the app store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/birdie-...--Archival photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Library of Congress, and public domain collections. Golf course and modern photography from Pexels. Historical golf photos from the Johnny Goodman estate and personal archives. All images used under public domain or fair use for educational/documentary purposes. If you are the rights holder of any image used and would like it credited or removed, please contact us.

    29 min
  • 7 Episodes

About

Welcome to Roll it Back Productions, where golf history comes alive. We explore the golden age of golf, when hickory shafts, persimmon woods, and balata balls defined the sport. Before launch monitors and 350-yard drives, there was shotmaking, course design, and a deep connection between player and course. Each episode uncovers forgotten champions, the origins of iconic courses, and traditions that quietly disappeared as technology reshaped the game. If you love golf lore, vintage equipment, course architecture, and believe the soul of the game lives in its history, you're in the right place!

Information

  • Creator
    Roll It Back Productions
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    7
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Roll It Back Productions
  • Show Website
    Roll It Back Productions