Golf is a game of aristocrats

His­to­ry of the game of golf

The first men­tion of a game resem­bling golf is Feb­ru­ary 26, 1297. The venue was Hol­land, where the locals used a club and a leather ball to play. The win­ner was the one who most often hit the tar­get locat­ed a few hun­dred meters away.

Some sources, in turn, say that even before the emer­gence of golf in Scot­land, in Hol­land in the 17th cen­tu­ry, play­ers were already try­ing to put the ball into the hole with clubs.

Anoth­er ver­sion, made pub­lic in the spring of 2005 by the Chi­nese pro­fes­sor Ling Hongling, says that in Chi­na, five hun­dred years before the first men­tion of the game in Scot­land, they already played chui­wang, also sim­i­lar to mod­ern golf. In turn, answer­ing this ver­sion, one of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Roy­al St. Andrews Golf Club, which is the old­est in Scot­land, says that for many cen­turies games were played with sticks and a ball, but mod­ern 18-hole golf was invent­ed in Scot­land.

What­ev­er they say, it was the Scots who, accord­ing to offi­cial sources, were rec­og­nized as the inven­tion of mod­ern golf. After all, this game is men­tioned in the acts of the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment as far back as the 15th cen­tu­ry, which banned the game gowf (“goof”) because of “the con­stant waste of time on it.” And the mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tion of golf appeared in Scot­land along with the first golf clubs. They also invent­ed and approved the first rules, includ­ing the 18-hole rule.

It is also inter­est­ing that the old­est golf course is Old Links, which is locat­ed on the Mus­sel­burg Hip­po­drome. Accord­ing to some reports, the first games on this field took place in 1672. Although there is an opin­ion that the Scot­tish Queen Mary Stu­art played there as ear­ly as 1567.

Rules of the game

While play­ing golf, a play­er can use no less than two and no more than four­teen types of clubs. Dur­ing the game, par­tic­i­pants must com­plete a cer­tain num­ber of holes (usu­al­ly 18) in con­sec­u­tive order. A hole can be called both a hole in the ground and a play­ing area. Usu­al­ly, it con­sists of: a tee­ing area (“tar­get”) — the start­ing area, a fair­way (“direct direc­tion”) — the main area and a lawn, or green, — a spe­cial area with a cut hole. On any site, all sorts of obsta­cles are quite allowed — water, sand bunkers, trees, bush­es and tall grass.

To start the game, the iden­ti­fied ball is placed on the tee. The best option for a play­er is con­sid­ered if he hits the main fair­way with his first hit, makes sev­er­al hits on it, depend­ing on its type, and hits the green — the site on which, due to per­fect grass, the ball rolls with­out inter­fer­ence. To play on green golfers use a spe­cial type of club — a put­ter.

The game begins with a wood stick, which is char­ac­ter­ized by a mas­sive head and an angle of impact from sev­en to fif­teen degrees, which allows it to send the ball three hun­dred meters.

An iron stick is used when an aimed strike is need­ed at short­er dis­tances. It is lighter and has a lot-shaped head. The angle of incli­na­tion of the plane is cal­cu­lat­ed from fif­teen to forty-five degrees. Each such club is giv­en a num­ber, and the larg­er the num­ber, the greater the angle of incli­na­tion.

The wedge stick has an even greater angle to the hori­zon (from 45 to 64 degrees) and will be need­ed to send the ball with a canopy for a short dis­tance. So Sad Wedge is used for sand, and Chip­ping Wedge for grass.

golf eti­quette

Golf is con­sid­ered an aris­to­crat­ic game and has its own eti­quette. It includes the rules of con­duct on the field and care for its con­di­tion. Although eti­quette is not an offi­cial set of rules, it is con­sid­ered an impor­tant part of the game. Below are the points that are cus­tom­ary to observe while play­ing golf:

• do not stand near the play­er tak­ing the kick and do not inter­fere with him with your move­ments or con­ver­sa­tions;
• do not enter the game until the group in front has moved to a safe dis­tance;
• do not pro­long the game and release the putting green as soon as all the play­ers in your group have com­plet­ed the hole;
• skip for­ward the group play­ing faster than you;
• always restore the turf and lev­el your foot­prints in the bunkers;
• do not stand in the “putting” line of oth­er part­ners;
• do not car­ry clubs onto the putting green;
• place the flag care­ful­ly.

Golf Tour­na­ments

The most impor­tant men’s pro­fes­sion­al tour­na­ments include the Mas­ters, the British and US Opens (The Open Cham­pi­on and US Open respec­tive­ly), and the Pro­fes­sion­al Golf Asso­ci­a­tion Cham­pi­onship (PGA Cham­pi­onship).

Two years ago, in Octo­ber 2009, at the 121st ses­sion of the IOC, golf was includ­ed in the pro­gram of the Olympic Games by a major­i­ty of votes (63 against 27), and the first medals in it will be played in 2016 at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

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