The late Sir Michael Bonallack, OBE, former Secretary and Captain of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews wrote about 'The Golfers':

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‘I have looked at the painting countless times, Occasionally I identify the characters against the key that goes with the painting and pick out someone in particular. From now on, I will look at the painting with renewed interest, as a commentary on the people and events which were changing the old face of golf and starting to introduce it to a wider participation.

We present-day golfers should be grateful to those responsible for change and to Charles Lees for recording it so vividly.'

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Charles Bruce, Lord Bruce, Heir Apparent to the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, wrote:

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I congratulate Alastair Loudon for adding to our knowledge of the history of golf. He has clearly captured the social circumstances that lay behind the origins of the game, and the characters who led it to maturity and who introduced it to North America and around the world. I commend his scholarship to everyone who is interested in the heritage of this great game.

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Rand Jerris, Ph.D., a leading American golf historian, wrote:

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The Gentry Links Trilogy masterfully explores the personalities and mechanisms that drove substantial growth of the game in the United Kingdom and the geographic expansion of golf to every continent in the second half of the nineteenth century. For each volume of the trilogy, Loudon has focused on a body of evidence largely overlooked by previous golf scholars—that is, paintings, and specifically three of the most significant paintings in the history of golf art. Loudon demonstrates convincingly that visual imagery can be equally relevant both for broadening and deepening our understanding of golf history. It must be acknowledged that this is an important advancement in the methodology of golf scholarship, one which begs to be continued by future historians.