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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Golf is a sport, that is played using different types of clubs including woods, irons, and putters to hit a ball into each hole on a golf course in the least possible number of strokes. It is one of the few ball games that does not require a standardized playing area. Generally golf is played on golf courses.

Every time, a unique design consisting of either 9 or 18 holes is used.

The game of golf can be defined as “playing a ball with a club from the teeing ground into the hole by a stroke or successive strokes in accordance with the Rules.”
According to the reords, the first game of golf was played at Bruntsfield Links, in Edinburgh, Scotland, in A.D. 1456. the archives record of the Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society, now The Royal Burgess Golfing Society speks of this game. The modern game of golf spread from Scotland to England and has now become a worldwide game, with golf courses in the majority of affluent countries.

Golf competition is called stroke play, in which the individual with the lowest number of strokes is declared the winner.  Golf as a spectator sport became increasingly popular in different parts of the world. Different levels of professional and amateur tours are being held in many parts of the world. Arnold Palmer, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Lorena Ochoa and Annika Sörenstam are some big names in the game. Sponsorship has become a huge part of the game and players often earn more from their sponsorship contracts than they do from the game itself. The term Golf was first used in writing in 1457 on a Scottish statute on forbidden games as gouf, which according to experts may have derived  from the Scots word goulf meaning “to strike or cuff”.  Anyhow, the game has gained a status among a big majority of sports lovers in the Europe and US and Australia making it a popular sports event.

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