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On November 28, 1888 an article appeared in the Edinburgh Evening News under the headline New Golf Green in London: “At the instigation of a number of golfers, many of whom are Scotchmen, a course of nine holes has been laid out on Tooting Bec, a common on the south side of London. The course, though practically level, is not without diversity. Of hazards in the form of bunkers there are none, but groups of whin and bramble abound, and at several points it is necessary to make a passage through clumps of trees before the hole is reached. A club has been started, whose membership is already large, and it increases every week.” The Golf’s Missing Links website quotes the 1888-89 Golfing Annual: “At first, a short tentative course of nine-holes was laid out. It had the drawback, however, of leaving unutilised a large portion of the common, and the admirable hazards afforded by the bushes. The committee invited Tom Dunn, of North Berwick to come south and advise them in the laying out of an 18-hole course. Dunn spent two days surveying the common towards the end of December, the outcome of his labours being the formation of a pretty, strategical course of 18-holes, on which players do not cross another party, and in which bushes, water and ditches are utilised with splendid effect.” There was just one problem, no one had asked permission and this use of the common, which was open to all, had begun to attract complaints, not least from Henry Labonchere, MP for Nottinghamshire, who stormed against the “Demon Golfers” who were monopolising public spaces. By now the game had already been banned by the London County Council – despite the fact that among its most enthusiastic players were MPs. Some 18 months after the club had set up the Wandsworth Board of Works raised the issue because of the “risk of danger to children and others frequenting” the common. It was proposed that the London County Council should be informed of this egregious breaking of its own rules that prohibited such activities. The Glasgow Herald accused the LCC of introducing “harassing regulations and restrictions” for having the temerity to hamper the golfers’ game. However, the club was forced to move at first, in 1892, to part of the Seely Estate at Furzedown, where its regulars included the Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, and then again in 1906, to South Lodge, Mitcham Common. In 1927 the club changed its name to South Lodge Golf Club. This part of the common did not last, it came under the bulldozer and housing was built.