Golf Is A Game Which Has An Extremely Interesting History
Golf today is played in nearly every country on Earth and its leading players are
household names watched by millions of people as they take part in a number of annual tournaments at golf courses which frequently look as if they were painted as a film backdrop instead of being carved from Mother Nature herself. But have you ever wondered about the history of this most popular sport?
There are naturally a number of versions of the history of the game of as people and states want to stake their claim in the history books. Most historians of the sport are agreed however that golf was born more than a thousand years ago in Scotland.
In its earliest days what we today call golf was nothing more than a pastime to while away the time for bored sheep herders and farmers who competed against one another by hitting stones with sticks to see who could get their stone into a nearby rabbit burrow.
This game quickly spread however and began to attract the attention of the population at large finally reaching all the way up to the very top of Scottish society with King James II and Mary Queen of Scots both reputed to have been keen golfers during the 16th century.
It was simply a matter of time therefore before the game became a national pastime and in the 17th century the very first golf course was established at St. Andrews and shortly after this the first set of rules for the game were drawn up and published in 1744.
However golf really began to take off at the end of the 19th century when it crossed the Atlantic and a number of wonderful golf courses were created in the eastern United States including Winged Foot in New York and Pine Valley in New Jersey.
From here golf caught the imagination of wealthier Americans and the game grew dramatically during the 20th century with possibly the height of its expansion taking place during the 1920s.
Nowadays the game of golf is played by many millions of people from every background and walk of life. Indeed, in the United States alone some figures put the number of regular golfers at over 30 million. I think you will agree that this is not bad for a pastime which was originally designed to simply amuse a few bored Scottish sheep herders.