The Panorama of Golf History
A golf-like game is recorded as taking place on 26 February 1297, in the Netherlands, in a city called Loenen aan de Vecht, where the Dutch played a game with a stick and leather ball. The winner was whoever hit the ball the most number of times into a target several hundreds of meters away.
Some scholars argue that this game of putting a small ball in a hole in the ground using golf clubs was also played in 17th-century Netherlands and that this predates the game in Scotland. There are also other reports of earlier accounts of a golf-like game from continental Europe.
As you might assume, however, when a great game such as golf was invented, everyone wanted to claim that it was their country’s idea. For example, the country of Scotland claims that it invented the game. But then again, so does Italy, China, England, France, Holland, Belgium, and countries far away in Asia. Games that resembled golf in other countries included ‘paganica’ in Italy. This was a game that involved using a stick and a rock to hit a target. In Scotland, the same game was referred to as ’shinty.’ In the country of Laos, it was called ‘khi’, and in China it was called ‘ch’ui wan’, which translates into ‘beating a ball’.
It all started out with a simple stick and a rock. Like today’s golf equipment and golf ball. Man took these two items and decided to create a way to entertain himself. After all, what else was there to do for fun before the 15th century that didn’t involve beheadings and fighting wars? Although the game of golf started out by man swinging a stick towards a rock in order to propel it into a certain direction, this was the way that many current sports games started. Just about any place or country you could find a stick and a rock, you could find golf, baseball, tennis, lacrosse, or hockey!
Some of these games were played before the year 300 B.C. – so to be able to pinpoint exactly where it started would be nearly impossible! Historians themselves have only one answer as to who invented golf: They just don’t know! Golf may be one of those games that was so great, and so many people loved to try it, that it really had no origin. It was born when the Earth was born, and it is universal in its popularity!
Over the centuries, golf has become more and more popular all over the world. Even though no one knows where the game was truly born, we all know one thing – just about everyone enjoys playing it!