Today in sports history -- Oxford vs. Cambridge

In case anyone's wondering why I didn't post anything this morning, it's because there was a widespread power outage in Painesville, my place of residence, apparently caused by a poor animal who hit two wires next to a substation and caused a blowout.

Anywhat, 130 years ago today, Oxford played Cambridge in golf, and Oxford won. I have been unable to find any details about that match, but I'd sure be interested to see what it was like. Golf was already a very old game by then, having been invented in roughly the 12th century in Scotland -- but it didn't become standardized in any significant way until much, much later. In 1764, the Old Course at St. Andrews was reconfigured from 11 holes to nine, and playing the whole course twice became a sort of standard, at 18 holes. But whether Oxford played Cambridge there in 1878, I have no idea.

Incidentally, the man lining up a shot in the photo above is Old Tom Morris, who did not play golf for Oxford or Cambridge; he was already 56 years old when that match was played. I don't know what year that photo was shot, but it conveys some idea of what golf looked like in the 19th century.