The Origin of Golf: From Ancient Ball Games to the Modern Sport

On March 6, 1457, the Scottish Parliament issued an unusual decree: “Golf and football are hereby strictly forbidden.” The reason was straightforward. Men were wandering along the coastline, knocking stones with sticks, instead of attending to their military training. Scotland was under constant threat of English invasion at the time, and the kingdom’s defense depended on every able-bodied man’s skill with the bow.^[1]

The ban was repeated twice more — in 1471 and again in 1491. That repetition is itself telling. It proves, paradoxically, that people kept playing golf in defiance of the law.

Was Golf Invented Solely by Scotland?

The debate over golf’s origins is more complicated than it might seem. There is no dispute that Scotland was the birthplace of modern golf. But whether the concept of “hitting a ball with a stick into a target” originated in Scotland is a different question entirely.

Three candidates are frequently cited: China’s Chuiwan, the Netherlands’ Kolf, and Rome’s Paganica.

China’s Chuiwan: The Strongest Precedent

Chuiwan was a ball game documented during the Song dynasty (960–1279), with its rulebook, the Wan Jing, compiled in 1282.^[2] This text is one of the most detailed ancient records of a golf-like game known to exist. Players used various types of clubs to hit a wooden ball into a small hole dug in the ground. The position of the hole was predetermined, and the goal was to complete the course in as few strokes as possible.

Chuiwan’s predecessor was the Tang dynasty (618–907) game of Butaqiu. Starting as a vigorous competitive sport, it gradually evolved during the Song dynasty into a quieter, more refined game of individual technique. Notably, this trajectory mirrors the direction Scottish golf would later take.^[3]

So was Chuiwan the origin of golf? The academic community is cautious. A 2018 study published in The International Journal of the History of Sport found that while the rule systems and equipment of the two games are strikingly similar, there is no direct historical evidence that the game was transmitted from China to Scotland.^[4] The existence of contact between Europe and China in the thirteenth century lends some weight to the hypothesis, but the chain of evidence remains incomplete.

The Netherlands’ Kolf: A Linguistic and Formal Link

Another strong candidate is the Dutch game of Kolf. The earliest known record appears in a 1261 manuscript by Flemish poet Jacob van Maerlant, which mentions “a game of hitting a ball with a kolf club.”^[5] The game was played on city streets, town squares, and frozen canals, typically aimed at stakes or posts as targets.

The linguistic connection is also noteworthy. The word “golf” itself is likely derived from the Dutch word kolf, meaning “club.” Linguists explain that the Dutch word kolf was transformed into gouff or golf in fifteenth-century Scottish dialect.^[5]

However, there is a critical difference between Kolf and golf. Kolf was a game played on flat urban surfaces, aimed at a target such as a post, whereas golf was played across rugged natural terrain (links), with the aim of getting a ball into a hole in the ground. The feel and experience of the two games were fundamentally different.^[5]

What Scotland Did Differently

The Scottish golf targeted by the 1457 ban had already developed its own distinct character. It used the natural coastal sandland known as “links” as its course, used a sunken hole as the target, and the objective was to complete the round in the fewest strokes. Whether or not some concepts were borrowed from Chuiwan or Kolf, the combination of these three elements appears to have come together independently in Scotland.^[6]

From Ban to Royal Sport: The Scottish Golf Paradox

The situation reversed dramatically after King James II’s 1457 ban. In 1502, when James IV visited Perth, records show that an expensive set of golf clubs was specially made for him. Within just 45 years, the royal household had taken up the sport it had once banned.^[1]

There is an explanation for this reversal. The signing of the Treaty of Perpetual Peace with England in 1502 eased military tensions, and golf became a pastime and a means of social connection for nobles and royalty. James IV’s wife, Margaret Tudor, is recorded as one of the first aristocratic women to play golf.

In the latter half of the sixteenth century, there are records of Mary Queen of Scots playing golf. The claim that she played golf immediately after the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley, was used as a political weapon against her. This episode illustrates just how deeply golf had become embedded in Scottish aristocratic culture.^[1]

The Links: The Terrain That Made Golf What It Is

Understanding the nature of golf courses makes it clearer why Scotland became the home of golf. The links along Scotland’s eastern coastline are narrow, rough stretches of sandy ground between the sea and the inland. Unsuitable for farming and impractical for construction, this land had long been used only for grazing sheep.

The natural clearings created by grazing sheep, the hollows carved by sand-driven winds, and the uneven ground shaped by sea breezes became the prototype of the golf course. Some historians have suggested that golf began when shepherds amused themselves by hitting stones into rabbit holes with short sticks, but this remains speculation.^[6]

Early golf courses had varying numbers of holes, quite unlike today’s standardized format. Leith Links had five holes, Prestwick had twelve, and Montrose had twenty-five. It was in 1764 that St Andrews reorganized its 22-hole course into 18 holes, by merging the shorter holes at each end into pairs.^[7] As St Andrews’ prestige grew, 18 holes became the de facto global standard.

The Birth of Rules: From 13 Articles to Modern Golf

Golf was played for a long time without codified rules, varying by local custom from place to place. The first official rules were established in 1744.

That year, Edinburgh City Council announced a competition on the links, offering a silver golf club as the prize. The Gentlemen Golfers of Edinburgh drew up thirteen articles of rules for the tournament. These were the world’s first official rules of golf.^[8]

The thirteen articles contain principles still recognizable in golf today: the ball must be played as it lies; near the hole, play must begin from a tee; if a ball falls into water, it must be replayed from ahead of the hazard. These rules were subsequently adopted, with minor modifications, by the Society of St Andrews Golfers (founded 1754, later to become the R&A).^[8]

These two institutions became the central axes of golf rule development for centuries to come. In 1897 the R&A was officially recognized as the governing body for the rules of golf, and in 1952 it unified its rules with the United States Golf Association (USGA) to complete the foundation of the single international rules system we have today.^[8]

The Evolution of Equipment: Technology Changes the Game

The heads of early golf clubs were made from hard woods such as apple and beech, with shafts crafted from ash or hazel. Iron-headed clubs were also used for approach shots near the green.

The history of the ball is even more dramatic. The “featherie,” used from the early seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, was a ball made by stuffing a leather pouch with boiled goose feathers. The manufacturing process was extraordinarily difficult — a skilled craftsman could make only three or four per day — and the price exceeded that of a fine club.^[9] Another drawback was that the ball became thoroughly waterlogged in rain, dramatically reducing its flight distance.

In 1848 a revolution changed all of this. The “gutty” appeared, a ball made from gutta-percha — a rubber-like substance derived from the hardened sap of the Malaysian sapodilla tree.^[9] As manufacturing costs fell to less than one-tenth of those for the featherie, golf began to shed its status as the exclusive preserve of the upper classes.

In 1898, Coburn Haskell patented the prototype of the modern golf ball: a rubber core wound with thread and covered with balata.^[9] This ball achieved significantly greater distance than the gutty, and it was during this period that the dimple pattern on the ball’s surface was found to reduce air resistance and enable stable flight.

Club materials also changed. Steel shafts began to be introduced in the 1900s, and the USGA officially permitted them in 1924. By the 1930s steel had completely replaced hickory wood, and from the 1980s carbon fiber and titanium appeared, leading to the equipment innovations of today.^[9]

A History of Tournaments: From The Open to the Four Majors

The world’s first open golf championship was held on October 17, 1860, at Prestwick Golf Club. Eight professional players competed by playing three rounds of the 12-hole course, with Willie Park Sr. defeating Old Tom Morris by two strokes to become the inaugural champion.^[10]

This is the event that today bears the name The Open Championship. Its origins are also interesting. When Allan Robertson, widely regarded as the finest professional golfer of his time, died in 1859, there was a need for a competition to identify a “Champion Golfer” who could fill his shoes.^[10]

The success of The Open led to the creation of other tournaments. The US Open began in 1895, and the PGA Championship in 1916. The Masters Tournament was first played in 1934 on a course designed by the legendary amateur Bobby Jones in Augusta, Georgia. These four events constitute what is now known as the men’s four major championships.^[11]

Golf Goes Global: The Routes of Empire and Emigration

Golf spread beyond Scotland through two main channels: the expansion of the British Empire and the movement of Scottish emigrants.

The Royal Calcutta Golf Club, founded in Calcutta, India, in 1829, is known as the first golf club established outside Great Britain.^[12] Clubs were subsequently established across British colonies, including Australia (1847) and South Africa (1885). British soldiers and colonial administrators brought their golf clubs with them when posted to new territories.

In North America, Scottish immigrants played a leading role. The Royal Montreal Golf Club, founded in 1873, was the first golf club in North America.^[12] In the United States, golf began to spread in earnest when Scotsman John Reid founded a club in Yonkers, New York, in 1888. The first US Open was held in 1895, and over the course of the twentieth century, America emerged as the center of world professional golf.

In Japan, the first golf course was laid out in 1903 on Mount Rokko near Kobe by British merchant Arthur Groom.^[12] Across East Asia, golf took root during the first half of the twentieth century primarily as a sport of Western business elites, with wider popularization following economic growth from the 1980s onwards.

A History of Exclusion: Barriers of Race and Gender

Golf’s history is not without its shadows. For much of the twentieth century, the majority of golf clubs in the United States officially excluded Black golfers. The PGA of America had a provision in its bylaws restricting membership to white players from 1943 to 1961.^[13]

Charlie Sifford is the most prominent figure to have challenged this barrier. After being denied entry to the Richmond Open by the PGA in 1948, he fought through years of legal battles to become the first Black golfer to earn a PGA Tour card in 1961.^[13] He was never invited to the Masters, however. It was not until 1975, through Lee Elder, that a Black player first competed at the Masters.^[13]

The exclusion of women was another long-standing shadow over golf culture. Augusta National Golf Club did not admit its first female members — Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore — until 2012. Long-standing protests by women’s rights organizations and pressure on corporate sponsors drove the change.^[14]

Return to the Olympics and the Modern Coordinates of Golf

Golf was included as an official event at the 1900 Paris Olympics and the 1904 St. Louis Olympics, then disappeared from the Olympic program for 112 years.^[15] Following the International Olympic Committee’s 2009 decision to restore it, golf returned as an official sport at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Today, an estimated 60 million people play golf worldwide, with more than 40,000 regulation courses.^[12] The PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, European Tour, and LIV Golf — launched in 2022 with Saudi Arabian backing — all compete for supremacy in the professional golf market.

The game that the Scottish Parliament tried to ban in 1457 has become one of the highest prize-money sports in the world. What was once treated as a leisure activity interfering with military training has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry.

And yet the essence of the game remains remarkably unchanged. On rugged natural terrain, in as few strokes as possible, put the ball in the hole. That is exactly what the people on the Scottish coastline were doing when their king issued his ban.