History Of GolfThe rise of professional golfWomen's golf Golf todayRules and RegulationsGoverning BodiesTournamentsOther Forms of Golf
History Of Golf
The rise of professional golf
Women's golf
Golf today
Rules and Regulations
Governing Bodies
Tournaments
Other Forms of Golf
History Of Golf
Some historians feel that golf originated in the Netherlands (the Dutch word kolf means club),
and some authorities trace golf back to a Roman game. The Romans, who occupied most of the island of Great Britain from the A.D. 40's to the early 400's,
had a game they played in the streets, with a bent stick and a ball made of
leather and stuffed with feathers, that may have been the original source of the
game called paganica. Other historians trace golf to a Dutch game called
het kolven, a French and Belgian game called chole, a French game called
jeu de mail, and an English game called cambuca.
In any event, it has been fairly well established that the game actually was devised by the Scots in the 14th or 15th century. The game became so popular in Scotland that in order to keep people from playing golf and football during time that should have been employed in practicing archery, a military necessity, the Scottish parliament in 1457 passed a law prohibiting both games. The Scottish people, however, largely ignored this and similar laws, and early in the 16th century James IV, king of Scotland, took up the game of golf. His granddaughter Mary, later Mary, queen of Scots, took the game to France, where she was educated. The young men who attended her on the golf links were known as cadets, "pupils"; the term was adopted later in Scotland and England, becoming caddy or caddie. (Caddies, once an integral feature of the game, have now been largely superseded by golf carts and buggies.) In England the game was made popular by the attention given it by James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, and his son Charles I.
In the 18th century the first golf associations were established. The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers in
Edinburgh, Scotland, is often recognized as the first organized golf club. It was established in 1744 and set down the first written rules of the game.
These rules were developed to govern play and settle disputes. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews
was founded in 1754 as the Society of St. Andrews Golfers.
It was the leader in setting golf's rules and standards. For example, it set the standard round of golf at 18
holes, in 1834 it took its present name, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St.
Andrews. The Royal Blackheath (1766), near London, where according to tradition golf was introduced to England in 1608.
The popularity of golf spread from Scotland and England to parts of the British Commonwealth.
The first clubs established outside Britain were the Calcutta Golf Club
(1829) and the Royal Bombay Club (1842). The first golf club established in the western hemisphere was Canada's
Royal Montreal Golf Club, founded in 1873.
It is believed that golf was played in America during the colonial period, but no documented proof of this has been advanced.
Historians disagree over which existing golf club in the United States was founded first. Among the oldest American clubs are the
Dorset Field Club in Dorset, Vermont; the Foxburg Country Club in
Foxburg, Pennsylvania; and the St. Andrews Golf Club in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. All three clubs claim founding dates in the 1880's. The Amateur Golf Association of the United States (now the
United States Golf Association) was founded in 1894 to serve as the governing body for golf in the United States. In 1951, the USGA and Britain's
Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews agreed to jointly interpret the rules and standards that now govern golf throughout the world. The popularity of the game in the U.S. and Great Britain reached great heights by the 1920s and has steadily increased in recent years, fostered by television. In the U.S. alone, more than 12,400 golf courses serve over 20 million people who play golf at least once a year.
Golf is also popular in Canada, South Africa, and Australia and since the end of World War II has enjoyed phenomenal growth in Japan.
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The rise of professional
golf
In 1916, American professional golfers formed the PGA. Until then, amateur golfers dominated the sport.
Bobby
Jones, who retired in 1930, was the finest amateur golfer of his day. But outstanding professionals, notably
Walter Hagen, were beginning to establish golf as a major sport. Hagen was a superb golfer who won additional fame in the 1920's for his showmanship and flamboyant style. Other leading early professionals included
Tommy Armour, Gene
Sarazen, Horton Smith, and Joe Turnesa.
Some of the first events on the American professional tour began in the early 1920's, and the tour became established in the 1930's. It was led by such golfers as
Ben Hogan, Byron
Nelson, and Sam
Snead. Prize money averaged less than $10,000 per tournament until after World War II ended in 1945. During the late 1940's, tournament purses in PGA events averaged about $12,000. Hogan and Snead dominated the sport in the 1950's along with
Jimmy
Demaret, Lloyd Mangrum, and
Cary Middlecoff. Top professionals of the 1960's and early 1970's included Americans
Arnold Palmer,
Jack
Nicklaus, and Billy
Casper, along with Gary Player of South Africa.
The U.S. PGA Tour now ranks as the biggest and richest golf tour in the world. In the late 1990's, the tour consisted of about 55 tournaments with prize money of more than $76 million.
Top (PLAYER
INDEX) (INDEX of
PLAYERS)
Women's golf
has enjoyed a growth similar to that of men's golf. From about 1900 through the 1920's, British amateurs dominated women's golf.
Joyce Wethered was the top British golfer during the 1920's, and some experts consider her the greatest woman golfer in history. By the 1930's, United States women golfers had become important. Top U.S. golfers included
Patty Berg,
Babe Didrikson
Zaharias, and Betty
Jameson.
Widespread interest in women's professional golf developed after World War II. Berg and Zaharias turned professional and became leaders of the
LPGA. The LPGA tour began in 1950 with 11 events worth about $45,000 in prize money. By the mid-1990's, it had 39 events worth about $26 million. Stars included
Nancy Lopez,
Jan
Stephenson, Amy
Alcott, and Pat
Bradley.
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Golf today
United States golfers dominated golf internationally until the late 1970's, when golfers from other countries began to emerge. These golfers included
Greg Norman of Australia,
Severiano Ballesteros of Spain,
Bernhard Langer
of West Germany, Isao Aoki of Japan, and
Sandy Lyle and Nick Faldo of Britain. Several professional tours also flourished outside the United States. The most important were the European tour, based in Britain; the South African tour; the Japanese tour; the Asian tour; and the Australia/New Zealand tour. Among the top U.S. golfers of the 1970's and 1980's were
Tom Watson,
Lee Trevino,
Ray Floyd, and
Fuzzy
Zoeller.
In 1980, the PGA Tour started the Senior PGA Tour for players 50 and older. The senior tour included Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead, and other noted professionals from the mid-1900's. It began with two tournaments and a total of $250,000 in prize money. By the mid-1990's, it had 44 tournaments and a total of about $37 million in prizes.
In 1996, Tiger Woods, a Stanford University sophomore, won his third straight U.S. amateur championship. Woods then turned professional and became an immediate sensation on the PGA tour.
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Rules and Regulations.
The rules of play for golf are numerous and complex and include a code of etiquette for behavior on the green.
The game was originally played with a ball made of feathers tightly packed in a leather
cover, called the feathery, until the gutty was introduced in 1848.
The gutty was a solid ball made of a rubbery substance called gutta-percha. The
gutty was later replaced by the rubber-cored ball invented in 1898 by U.S. golfer
Coburn
Haskell.
The pitted surface of modern golf balls acts to stabilize flight. The ball used in the U.S. has a diameter of no less than 4.27 cm (1.68 in) and weighs not more than 45.93 g (1.62 oz). The British have traditionally used a ball of this same weight but with a diameter of not less than 4.11 cm (1.62 in). In 1968 experiments were undertaken to investigate the possibility of establishing a single set of specifications for the ball.
(The
Haskell Ball)
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Governing Bodies
The organizations that establish golf rules for the world are the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews and the
United States Golf Association (USGA), founded in 1894. Before 1913, golf in America was played chiefly by people of wealth. In 1913, however, the American former caddie
Francis Ouimet (1893-1967) won a victory over two outstanding British professionals in the U.S. open championship tournament (open to amateurs and professionals), and thereafter golf claimed the attention of the general public. The Professional Golfers' Association of America (PGA) was organized in 1916, and annual tournaments were started during the same year. Currently, some 8500 members of the PGA assist amateur players, mostly as club or resort instructors; and each year several hundred professionals tour the country playing in major tournaments. These tours are controlled by the Tournament Players Division of the PGA. The Ladies Professional Golf Association
(LPGA) numbers about 550 club instructors and tournament players.
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Tournaments
Each year many golf championship tournaments take place. The most important of these for men are the U.S. Open (for professionals), the U.S. Amateur, the Masters (an invitational match for professionals), the PGA Championship, the British Open, and the British Amateur. For women the important tournaments are the British Ladies Amateur Championship, the U.S. Women's Amateur, and the U.S. Women's Open. International matches are also played, notably between teams from the U.S. and Great Britain. The Walker Cup Match (amateur) and the Ryder Cup Match (professional) are for men; the Curtis Cup Match (amateur) is for women. World competition is provided for men by tournaments for the Eisenhower Cup (amateur), the Ryder Cup and the World Cup (professional), and the Shun Nomura Trophy and the Francis H. I. Brown International Team Match Trophy (seniors); and for women by the Espirito Santo Trophy tournament.
The most famous feat in the history of golf was achieved by the American amateur player Robert Tyre (Bobby) Jones, Jr., who in 1930 made the so-called Grand Slam of golf by winning the British Open, the British Amateur, the U.S. Open, and the U.S. Amateur. One of the greatest women players of all time was Mildred (Babe) Didrikson Zaharias, an American who competed both as an amateur and as a professional.
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Other Forms of Golf
Because it is more a participant than a spectator game, variations of golf, many of which can be played at night under lights, are developed from time to time. Miniature golf, a putting game on fancifully designed courses, reached the height of its popularity in the 1930s. Special putting greens and driving ranges combine practice and recreation. Pitch and putt is a shorter version of the long game.
Contributor: Marino A. Parascenzo, B.A., Golf Writer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
World Book Encyclopedia CD-Rom 1999, Infopedia 2.0 CD-Rom
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