The history of golf traces back to the 12th century. It originated in Scotland, with shepherds knocking stones into rabbit holes in the place where the famous Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews now situate.  Anyhow, the exact date of the origin is unclear yet.

According to some scholars, the references of golf from hieroglyphs are found on stone tablets dating to ancient Egyptian

Pharaohs. Chui wan, a game consisting of driving a ball with a stick into holes in the ground was first mentioned in Dōngxuān Records, a Chinese book of 11th century. According to a Chinese professor named Ling Hongling of Lanzhou University, golf reached Europe through the Mongols in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Anyhow, golf was played in Scotland in1672. Golf courses do not always have eighteen holes. The course with eleven holes emerged in the 16th century. In 1764, several of the holes were deemed too short, and were therefore combined. The number was then reduced from 11 to nine. According to Golf Digest in 2002, there were nearly 32,000 golf courses in the world, approximately half of them in the United States. Scotland, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Canada, Wales, Sweden, and England also has significant amount of golf courses. 

Golf as professional sports was initially dominated by Scottish then English golfers.  But later, America produced the greatest quantity of leading professionals along with Australia and South Africa. In the 1970’s, Japan, Scandinavian and other Western European countries also saw a big hike in the number of golf players.
 
Golf is generally played in a course that has a series of holes, each with a teeing area, fairway, rough and other hazards, and the green with the pin (flagstick) and cup. A typical golf course comprises of eighteen holes, but many smaller courses may only have nine. Modern golf course design has seen a return to its roots.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 5:20 am and is filed under Golf. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.