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    Now You Know Golf
    Now You Know Golf
    Now You Know Golf
    Ebook240 pages2 hours

    Now You Know Golf

    By Doug Lennox

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Everybody seems to be a golfer or at least knows someone who is. The game is one of the world’s most popular sports, and now Doug Lennox, the links pro of Q&A, hits the green with a barrage of golfing trivia on everything from albatrosses and barkies to Vardon grips and zingers. All the titans, male and female, take a swing, including Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Kathy Whitworth, Vijay Singh, Annika Sorenstam, Michelle Wie, and, of course, Tiger Woods.

    • What is the oldest playing golf course in the world?
    • Where was golf invented?
    • How does the term sandbagger connect golf with criminals?
    • What member of British royalty introducedgolf to Continental Europe?
    • Who was the first female golfer to compete in a major men’s professional match?
    • What type of golf club did astronaut Alan Shepard use on the moon?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDundurn
    Release dateSep 2, 2008
    ISBN9781459718142
    Now You Know Golf
    Author

    Doug Lennox

    Doug Lennox was an internationally acclaimed broadcaster, a veteran character actor, a commercial voice artist, and a bestselling author. He has appeared in more than 60 films and television features, including X-Men, Police Academy, Lonesome Dove, and Against the Ropes, and shared screen time with Meg Ryan, Hugh Jackman, Burt Reynolds, Holly Hunter, Eric McCormack, Gary Oldman, and a myriad of others.

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      Book preview

      Now You Know Golf - Doug Lennox

      List

      preface

      Golf is a mysterious game. It is a great puzzle to understand why anyone would want to engage in an activity whose aim, as Winston Churchill famously put it, is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose. And why this game should have been so enthusiastically received in Scotland, where the modern game came into existence, is surely itself one of the great insoluble mysteries of the universe.

      But golf is also a fascinating and seductive game, rife with appeal and challenge. To be on the links in the midst of nature on a dewy morning, to face golf’s seemingly infinite variety of circumstances (from shot to shot, hole to hole, course to course), to experience the camaraderie of other golfers, to marvel at the talents of the game’s great players, to understand the physics that govern much of golf’s world, to lose oneself in the ancient traditions that permeate the sport—all of these elements and more explain why, from St. Andrews to Tokyo, golf has been embraced as one of mankind’s most enchanting and enjoyable activities.

      In this book I have delved into all these subjects and beyond to shed light on many of golf’s most puzzling, idiosyncratic, and diverting mysteries. I hope this book’s many questions, answers, lists, facts, statistics, and sidebars, as well as its occasional moment of couched speculation (inevitable in any investigation into the often-patchy history of golf), will not only inform and entertain readers, but also enhance their enjoyment of the links, especially on those occasions when that very small ball, as Churchill put it, simply refuses to go into that even smaller hole.

      the hole story

      Who gave golf its hole?

      The precise origin of the game of golf is not known. It is generally agreed among historians that games involving pebbles or small balls being struck with sticks across open ground towards elevated targets have existed worldwide for eons. But the first recorded reference to such a game, in which the goal was to sink the ball into a hole in the ground, is from 943 AD China. The Dongxuan Records, written by Wei Tai of the Song Dynasty, describe the Chinese game of chuiwan, which was played in a circuit on a lawn with many holes. Popular with royalty and commoners alike, chuiwan was often depicted in Chinese poetry, opera, and painting until the middle of the Ming Dynasty, in the 15th century, when it disappeared. While it is commonly contended that the Scottish introduced the hole to golf, Chinese historians hold that trade between East and West during the Middle Ages might have easily introduced chuiwan-like games to Europe, although no records show early European versions of the game employing a hole.

      Who first brought golf to Scotland?

      As early as 1262, the Flemish played chole, a game in which a ball is struck by a club across a field towards a goal post. In 1421, during the Hundred Years’ War, Hugh Kennedy, Robert Stewart, and John Smale, three Scottish soldiers, first played chole while their regiment was in western France to help French forces fight the English at the Battle of Baugé. The English were defeated, and the trio brought chole back to Scotland, where the game eventually evolved into modern golf.

      Quickies

      Did you know …

      • early golf club makers in Scotland were also bow makers for archery?

      What was colf?

      Many golf-like games sprung up simultaneously across Europe in the Middle Ages. One such early cousin of golf was the Dutch game colf. Extremely popular in the Netherlands from the 13th through the 17th centuries, colf was originally played in city squares or streets, and involved driving a ball with a hockey stick-like club towards a pole or natural target. Due to broken windows and injuries caused by game play, in the mid-1400s colf was banished to the countryside. In winter, colf was played on frozen canals. A popular subject for period paintings, winter colf is considered by many to also be a predecessor to ice hockey.

      What is kolf?

      Kolf is the singular term for the Dutch game historically known as kolven, which was extremely popular in the Netherlands in the 18th and 19th centuries. A variation of the extinct Dutch outdoor game of colf, it is played indoors on a small court and consists of hitting a ball with a stick along the floor between two target poles. Though its popularity has faded considerably, kolf still has a small following today in the Netherlands. Like colf, the word kolf is often believed to be the origin of the word golf.

      The 12 Oldest Golf Clubs Outside the Island of Great Britain

      • Royal Calcutta Golf Club, Kolkata, India (1829)

      • Pau Golf Club, Billère, France (1856)

      • Royal Montreal Golf Club, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (1873)

      • Bangalore Golf Club, Bengaluru, India (1876)

      • Royal Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland (1881)

      • Curragh Golf Club, County Kildare, Ireland (1883)

      • Oakhurst Links, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, USA (1884)

      • Royal Cape Golf Club, Wynberg, Cape Town, South Africa (1885)

      • St. Andrew’s Golf Club, Yonkers, New York, USA (1888)

      • Hong Kong Golf Club, Hong Kong, China (1889)

      • Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, Southampton, New York, USA (1891)

      • Royal Adelaide Golf Club, Adelaide Australia (1892)

      What is the origin of the word golf?

      The word golf first appeared in a Scottish statute issued in 1457 by James II, King of Scots, banning the game. In Scotland, from the Middle Ages until the mid-1800s, the printed word saw many variations in spelling, including gouff, goiff, goff, gowff, and golph. The exact etymology is not known, though it is possible that the word derived from the names of the similar Dutch games colf or kolf—terms which themselves derive from the Old Norse word kolfr, meaning club. Yet, interestingly, there are no recorded instances of the Scottish term being spelled with the initial letters c or k, so it is equally—or perhaps more—likely that the word evolved from the old Scottish word gouf, meaning to strike.

      Five Rarely Recorded Royal & Ancient Moments in Scots Golf

      • 1502, at Perth—James IV, King of Scots, lifts a ban on golf, then purchases clubs himself.

      • 1562, at Montrose—The 4th Earl of Montrose, James Graham, records in his diary that he played golf the day before his wedding.

      • 1567, at Seton House—Mary, Queen of Scots, plays golf within days of her husband’s assassination.

      • 1619, at Dornoch—The 14th Earl of Sutherland, John Gordon, age 16, receives his first set of clubs, purchased for £10.

      • 1641, at Leith Links: King Charles I receives news of the Irish Rebellion while playing golf.

      Why did James II, King of Scots, ban golf in 1457?

      By the mid-15th century, golf was extremely popular in Scotland. So popular, in fact, that the Parliament of James II felt it was necessary to issue a decree banning the game. At the time, 1457, Scotland was preparing to defend itself against possible invasion by the English, and golf was distracting soldiers from archery practice. In both 1470 and 1491 the ban was extended, but it was by then ignored by the Scottish people. In 1502, with the Treaty of Glasgow between Henry VII of England and James IV of Scotland, the ban on golf was finally lifted. James IV almost immediately took up the sport himself.

      Why do we refer to golf courses as links?

      The word link is derived from the Old English word hlinc, meaning to lean, and was once used to describe a rising bank or ridge of leaning ground. In Scotland, the word came to be used for the coastal strips of semi-barren land found between the ocean and inland farming areas. Links land was too sandy for crops, so it was used for golfing and other leisure activities. There were no trees close to the beach and the sand traps were natural, with tall, reedy grass as the only vegetation. Otherwise worthless, these narrow strips of public land would eventually become extremely valuable as golf courses.

      Where was the first golf hole in Scotland?

      The first recorded instance of a hole in the ground being used as a target on a Scottish golf course comes from the archives of the eastern coastal city of Aberdeen, where, in 1625, it was noted that military exercises were held in the principal parts of the links betwixt the first hole and the Queen’s hole. The links in question were the Queen’s Links, now used as municipal parkland which holds a public course called the King’s Links.

      Quickies

      Did you know …

      • early wooden golf clubs heads were weighted by drilling out holes into which molten lead was poured? Ram’s horn would be used to protect the soles of the clubs.

      Where was the first golf clubhouse built?

      In 1768, the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers built the first clubhouse dedicated to golf at Leith Links, north of Edinburgh. Called the Golf House, the building, which stood at the location of today’s Queen Margaret University College, serviced a golf course of only five holes.

      Where is the oldest standing golf clubhouse?

      At the address of 30/31 Wrights Houses, on the edge of the historic Bruntsfield Links in Edinburgh, the Golf Tavern traces its roots back to 1456. Its current incarnation, built in the 17th century, was the clubhouse for the Bruntsfield Links Golfing Society from about 1788 to 1890, after which the Bruntsfield Society moved its activities south to the Musselburgh club on the East Lothian coast. While the tavern no longer functions as a private clubhouse, it continues to serve the dining and drinking needs of golfers at Bruntsfield and holds one of Scotland’s largest collections of golf memorabilia.

      Was the first woman golfer a murderer?

      The earliest record of a woman golfer dates from December 6, 1568, when Lord James Stewart, regent of Scotland, put articles before the Westminster Commissioners accusing his half-sister Mary, who had been forced to abdicate the Scottish throne the previous year, of playing golf at Seton House only a few days after the assassination of her husband, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, on February 10, 1567. Mary, an avid golfer, had been famously implicated in the murder, and to be a golfing widow, it seems, not only increased suspicion, but was also considered unbecoming to royalty.

      There were no private golf courses in the early days of golf in Scotland. Rather, men would form golfing clubs, or societies, and play their games on public land. Even today, the links at St. Andrews are still owned by the town and not the golf societies that play on them. Here are 10 of Scotland’s oldest golfing societies and their founding dates.

      Why was the first English golf course actually Scots?

      The first golf club established outside Scotland was the Royal Blackheath, near Greenwich Palace, in England. It is known that golf has been played there since 1603, the year James VI, King of Scots, descended upon London with his courtiers to be crowned James I, King of England, after the death of Elizabeth I, the virgin queen. The Scots, of course, brought their clubs and almost immediately adopted Blackheath as their playing ground.

      Who played in the first international golf match?

      We know only half the story. The first international golf match was played in 1682 between Scotland and England. James II, Duke of York—after whom New York would later be named—played for Scotland with George Patterson, hosting two English noblemen at Leith. The Scots won, and apparently no one felt it important enough to note the names of the losers. We don’t know who they were.

      Who was the first caddy?

      The word caddy is thought to have been introduced to English from the French word cadet, meaning younger brother or junior. It is believed that in the early 1500s, Mary, Queen of Scots, first encountered the practice of using a caddy in France, where junior soldiers were assigned to carry the clubs of royalty. The word cadet first appeared in English in 1610 and the word caddy in 1634. The first known Scottish caddy was Andrew Dickson, who carried the clubs of the Duke of York during the first international match in 1682.

      How did St. Andrews invent the 18-hole course when the Old Course had 11 fairways?

      In 1744, the St. Andrews Society of Golfers was formed. Golf was by then very popular in Scotland, but there was no standardized course. The St. Andrews course consisted of 11 fairways. For a full round, golfers played all 11 in one direction, then turned around and played them back in the opposite direction, making a total of 22 holes. On October 4, 1764, the members of St. Andrews made one of the most important decisions in golf history. In 1764, they decided that the first four holes were too short, so they voted to combine them into two holes. Thus was born the 18-hole golf

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