The Nicklaus of book collectors

PEPPER PIKE, Ohio -- Alastair Johnston finished his internship with IMG in 1969 and returned to Scotland, taking with him 30 books on Arnold Palmer and Gary Player that had been collecting dust in a storage room.

He never imagined where it all would lead.

Johnston returned to IMG and now is co-CEO of the world's largest sports management company, taking over when founder Mark McCormack died earlier this year.

And the books?

They were the start of the most stunning golf library any one person has ever assembled.

"It's the best private golf library in the world," said Rand Jerris, historian for the U.S. Golf Association. "From everything I've heard, it's identified as the largest in the world."

The 546-year history of golf literature can be divided into two eras.

The first covers 400 years, and Johnston is responsible for most of that. He and his father spent eight years researching and writing "The Chronicles of Golf," an exhaustive tome that starts with the first mention of golf in print -- the 1457 Scottish Acts of Parliament -- and ends in 1857.

"The first true golf book was published in 1858," Johnston said. "This takes care of everything before that."

Johnston owns about every book written since then -- or so it seems.

He has close to 13,000 books and periodicals, arranged primarily by subject, packed into rows of shelves in an upstairs room at his home in suburban Cleveland.

A program from the 1925 U.S. Open. An instructional book by Harry Vardon. The first book devoted to golf, written in 1743. Tiger Woods' first book, "How I Play Golf," in English, French and Japanese.

Going in a new direction

It's a golf library like no other, made possible by a Scottish lad who gave up on collecting stamps.

"I remember going into Stanley Gibbons and only having 5 pounds for stamps," Johnston said in his distinctively Scottish brogue. "I realized no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much money I had, I would never have a great collection.

"So I said, 'I'm going to focus on golf books.' I was going to build the biggest golf book collection in the world."

No one disputes his success.

Jerris has never seen the library -- not many have -- but Johnston sends the USGA a catalog of his collection every year.

This year's catalog is 333 pages.

Among his collection is an original copy of the 1457 Scottish Acts of Parliament, when the king banned golf because he feared it was taking time away from archery practice.

One of Johnston's greatest finds was the first edition of "The Goff," which Thomas Mathison wrote in 1743, the first book devoted to golf.

The USGA might have more volumes in its library, although Jerris says that includes things such as yardage books and club handbooks.

Johnston and the USGA exchange information and catalogs, to see what the other has. The relationship lies somewhere between competition and corroboration.

"Alastair has outbid us at auction, but we've outbid him on other things," Jerris said. "In a lot of ways, our relationship is far more cooperative than competitive. We share catalogs. He's very forthright about what he's got and what has come in.

"He's very generous with our library. We never felt like he was an adversary."

The biggest difference is the USGA library is open to the public.

Johnson's library is more like a shrine.

"I share it with people I think are interested," Johnston said.