In a small West Virginia hamlet, a re-enactment of golf as it was played in its earliest days is carried out in superb fashion.

As pillows of fog cling to the Allegheny hills in a verdant corner of southern West Virginia, four gentlemen approach the elevated teeing ground of the first hole. They shake hands and wish each other well. The first scoops a tiny handful of moist sand from a container at the tee and with a pinch of his fingers has built himself a mound on which he places his ball. Calmly addressing it, he steadies the long-headed wooden driver and with a fluid, sweeping swing sends the ball soaring over the pond en route to the green of the first hole. The competition has commenced.

Perhaps that, or something similar, was the scene in 1888, when the members of the Oakhurst Links club in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., staged their club championship. But for golf romantics, historians and lovers of the game, this vignette is re-enacted every morning, give or take a little fog, from May through October. Oakhurst still plays host to golfers amid spectacular mountain vistas, but now it is singularly dedicated to those who want to experience golf of the 19th century.

At Oakhurst, the differences between golf of the last century and today quickly become apparent. Teeing grounds are raked earth absent a single blade of grass. Oakhurst provides the balls and equipment necessary to play golf as it was in this country more than a century ago. Golfers are outfitted with four or five clubs: one or two woods for tee and long fairway shots, a couple of irons for approach shots, and a wood-headed putter. Daring golfers may also carry the teaspoon-like niblick, or rut iron, though many more bad shots than good ones will be made with it by golfers unaccustomed to its use. The clubs are replicas of equipment from the 1880s, and balls are made of a gutta percha composition and molded with lattice mesh pattern. Clubs are carried under the arm since the advent of the "club cover," a forerunner of the golf bag, did not come until the late 1890s.

Playing the first hole, golfers drive from an elevated tee over a small pond in the middle of the fairway, then across a long bunker, only two feet wide, and an adjacent mound to a postage stamp-sized green. Two putts to a hole marked with a three-foot-high flagstick and the first hole has been played in regulation.

"There was no Ôpar' score in the 1880s and this Ôtwo-shot' hole is the equivalent of today's four par," explained Lewis Keller Sr., a real estate developer, golf lover and the person most responsible for the restoration of Oakhurst Links to its current state as a living golf monument. "In stroke play, Oakhurst would be the equivalent of a par 38. Most golf in the 19th century was match play, so total scores were infrequently kept."

To fully experience golf as it may have been played 100 years ago would require play by the Rules of that era, and there was perhaps no Rule in golf recalled with more fervor than the stymie, which generally prohibited a player from lifting and marking his ball on the green. You played around or over the ball, which often sent less-than-skillfully executed shots from the green bladed 15 yards past the hole and into long grass. With enough experience, one comes to realize that a dogleg two-putt would have been the safer choice.

The story of Oakhurst is a legend at the roots of American golf that has been obscured for decades. The club was founded in the early 1880s by an American and several transplanted Scots. Russell W. Montague was a young, Harvard-trained lawyer who learned golf while furthering his studies in Britain. Facing a life of poor health, he heeded his doctor's advice and resettled in West Virginia. A neighbor, George Grant, also resettled in White Sulphur Springs for reasons of health, adding to the colony of Scotsmen who found the scenery remarkably like the old country. In the early 1880s, a nephew of Grant's named Lionel Torrin came to stay and with him began the golfing story.

Shortly after Torrin's arrival, he rigged up a primitive three-hole course on his Uncle George's estate. In need of a more fitting challenge, it was suggested that the Montague land would afford a splendid golf layout. The exact dates of the work are unsubstantiated, but the activity probably took place about 1881. Montague, Grant and Torrin were joined by yet more Scotsmen, George Donaldson and brothers Alexander and Roderick McLeod, to form the nucleus of the Oakhurst Links club.

Perhaps there were similarly loose collaborations of displaced Scots who turned a game or two elsewhere in the United States, but their Challenge Medal provides Oakhurst Links a unique precedent in the history of American golf. Dated 1888, it was presented to the winner of the club's challenge competition, though it is not known whether that was the first year of the competition, the only year or one of several medals awarded over time. This first American golf trophy is safely kept in a vault in town; a facsimile is displayed in the clubhouse.

In subsequent years, after Torrin, Grant and the McLeods returned to Britain, the small, essentially rural population of the remote village struggled to support golf. When the Greenbrier Hotel's White Course was constructed in 1913, it supplanted Oakhurst as the area's golf venue.

The course itself is a faithful restoration of the original layout. All nine holes were preserved throughout the time the course served as a pasture for the Montague family's livestock. That's the way Keller found it almost 40 years ago. The story of his acquisition and eventual restoration of the property is almost as inspiring as the course itself.

"In 1959 I was playing golf with Sam Snead while we were staying at the Greenbrier," Keller recalls. "Being a local boy, Sam knew about the Oakhurst history and took me to meet Russell Montague's son, the Rev. Cary Montague. The Montague farm was for sale and Sam thought it might be a nice summer home for us. Rev. Montague was reluctant to sell his farm to local buyers for fear that the site be used for a gambling casino -- White Sulphur Springs already supported a large number of such dens -- but Sam reassured Rev. Montague that I could be trusted to do the right thing and eventually a deal was struck for the 109 acres and farmhouse."

Early one evening, Montague took Keller out to the edge of one hill overlooking the pastures and pointed out the first tee and the layout of the remaining holes. The minister had lost almost all eyesight and yet had retained a vivid memory of the course. That description of the ancient course touched Keller's golfing heart and remained in his mind.

From 1960 into the 1990s, the Keller family spent its summers at the Montague farm. There they bred and raised horses on the very fairways golfers had trodden decades earlier. As the children matured the family became less active in its equine hobby. Concurrently, interest in the history of golf was gaining. One of Keller's friends, golf course architect Bob Cupp, suggested it might be time to restore the course to its original state. When Keller and Cupp surveyed the property, they found the areas formerly used as tees and greens fully intact but grown over. Maintenance work also uncovered terra cotta tiles laid in order to keep several of the fairways drained.

Oakhurst's nine holes, which measure about 2,250 yards, look deceptively simple until you've attempted to play them with antique clubs and balls. A pitch-and-putt course this is not. It is a course that stands alone in the entire universe. It is not merely a mock-up of an old course; it is an old course meant to be played like an old course.

There is one last theme to be found at Oakhurst Links. Aside from its position of historical seniority and the singular niche it occupies as a living, working museum, there is a less tangible attribute that may be lost to many casual golfers. Oakhurst is here today as a result of Keller's golf spirit and sense of guardianship.

"From the day I received the deed in 1960 until my good friend Sam Snead hit the ceremonial drive at our grand reopening in October 1994, my intention had always been to one day restore to playability what was probably America's earliest course," he said. "Over the years the thought of doing that got stronger and stronger. Finally, Bob Cupp convinced me we should do it right away. If someone else had purchased this property there might be rows of houses here now."

Oakhurst Links never grew large in membership or stature, nor did it figure prominently in the building of golf as a recreation in America. But it is important for being the first organized golf society with documentation and, even more importantly, it now serves as a window through which golfers can retreat in time to the foundations of their game.