15,697
edits
Changes
no edit summary
==Early HistoryWhat are the Origins of Golf?==The origins of golf are not universally agreed upon and there are disputes on when exactly the ancestors of the game emerged. There are records of a Roman game called <i>Paganica</i> that comprised of a ball stuffed with feathers and hit with wooden sticks. While the game is very different from today's golf, the sort of Roman game may have inspired later Medieval memory and reemergence of a similar game that then led to golf. Other similar games may include the Chinese game of <i>Chuiwan</i>, which also involved a stick and players tried to sink a ball into holes. There were sets of up to 10 clubs, with balls made of wood and holes spread across an area, where the holes each had different degrees of difficulty. The depictions also suggest there was a tee or place to hit the ball toward a given hole.<ref>For more on the ancient origins of golf, see: Mallon, Bill, and Randon Matthew Newman Jerris. 2011. Historical Dictionary of Golf. Historical Dictionaries of Sports, no. 3. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press.</ref>
One possible modern origin is in the Medieval Netherlands, where the term "golf" seems to have a Dutch origin. The game of <i>kolven</i> involved sticks or bats, perhaps similar to a shepherd's hook or stick, but the game may have not contained holes. The earliest records that depict golf come from Medieval paintings in the 15th century and the first book, called Tyrocinium linguae latinae, talks about daily life in the Netherlands where people played a game with sticks and at this points holes seem to have been utilized, where balls were hit into the holes.<ref>For more on the origins of the sport in Netherlands, see: Gillmeister, Heiner. 2002. “Golf on the Rhine: On the Origins of Golf, with Sidelights on Polo.” The International Journal of the History of Sport 19 (1): 2–30. doi:10.1080/714001691.
