Scotland’s 15th-century game standardized eighteen holes in 1764
Golfers use clubs to knock a ball into a series of holes in as few strokes as possible. The modern game arose in fifteenth-century Scotland; the Old Course at St Andrews fixed the eighteen-hole round in 1764, and The Open remains golf’s oldest major.
Its deeper ancestry is debated. Some trace it to the Roman paganica, played with a bent stick and a stuffed leather ball; others to chuiwan, a Chinese game of the 8th to 14th centuries, pictured in a 1368 Ming scroll called The Autumn Banquet. Cambuca in England, chambot in France, Persian chowkan, and Dutch kolven, played yearly at Loenen from 1297, are other candidates.
The first Scottish mention is James II’s 1457 ban, which saw golf as a distraction from archery practice; James IV lifted it in 1502 after taking up the game himself. Musselburgh Links, in play by 2 March 1672, is certified by Guinness as the oldest course, and the oldest surviving rules were drawn up in March 1744 for the Company of Gentlemen Golfers at Leith. St Andrews reached eighteen holes by trimming its course from 22. The Open was first contested on 17 October 1860 at Prestwick, and in 1888 John Reid and Robert Lockhart of Dunfermline set up a hole in an orchard and then America’s first club in Yonkers.
Courses have no standard dimensions. Each hole runs from a tee through fairway, rough, bunkers, and water to a green, and holes that bend are called doglegs. The word links comes from Old English hlinc, rising ground, for the coastal dunes of early Scottish courses. An 18-hole round can exceed 7,000 yards of play and usually takes about four hours; tee shots beyond about 225 yards are hit with a driver.
Rules are set jointly by the USGA and the R&A, a body separated in 2004 from the St Andrews club founded in 1754, and a complete rewrite took effect in January 2019. Their guiding principle is to play the ball as it lies and the course as you find it. The other three men’s majors, the PGA Championship, the Masters, and the U.S. Open, are all held in the United States.
Source: Golf
