Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A Brief History of Golf

Starting point is 00:00:00 Every day, millions of people around the world hit the links to play a round of golf. While most people do it for fun, the very best at the game are able to earn millions of dollars a year as professionals. However, this global recreational and competitive sport has origins that most people aren't even aware of, dating back even earlier than its generally recognized origin. Learn more about the history of golf and how it became the sport that it is today on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now.

Starting point is 00:00:56 Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Golf is a sport that has a better known origin story than most sports. If you think you know how the game of golf originated in Scotland, you aren't wrong. However, there is much more to the story than that. To understand the true origins of golf before the modern game was developed in Scotland, we have to go back even further and cross the sea into continental Europe. In particular, we need to go to the Netherlands. Hitting a ball with a stick is a pretty simple activity that's been around for a very long time.

Starting point is 00:01:34 The origins of hitting a ball with a stick is unknown, but there were many informal games that people played where they would either try to get a ball as close as possible to an object, or try to reach an object in the fewest number of swings. This type of game where you hit a ball to reach an object was first formalized in the Netherlands. The first mention of such a game appeared in the 13th century and the game was called Culf, spelt with a C or a K. As far as we can tell, the rules of Culf were pretty simple

Starting point is 00:02:03 as it was just hitting a target hundreds of yards away in the fewest number of strokes. The target wasn't necessarily a hole in the ground. It probably would have been something like a large rock, a tree or the side of a barn. Culf wasn't played on a formal course. You could play Culf anywhere, including on a street or a field. Not surprisingly, Culf resulted in a lot of broken windows.

Starting point is 00:02:25 In 1326, Culf was banned in Brussels. Anyone caught playing Culf would be fined 20 shillings or have their overcoat confiscated. In 1889, the city of Harlem created a field solely for the purpose of playing Culf because it had become too dangerous to play within the walls of the city. Kolf also developed into a team game, not simply an individual sport. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Europe had the Little Ice Age, which resulted in rivers and canals in the Netherlands freezing over in the winter. These ice fields proved to be a particularly popular place to play golf in the winter.

Starting point is 00:02:59 It resulted in the game changing, with specialized sticks and balls. Paintings and drawings from this period show people playing with sticks that either look suspiciously like golf clubs or at least like field hockey sticks. The balls at this time would have been made out of wood or leather. Dutch traders took the game with them as they traveled. Dutch settlers in Fort Orange, which is now Albany, New York, were reported to be playing the game in 1659, causing the same problems that they did back in Europe. In the 18th century, Culf evolved in a totally different direction in the Netherlands than it

Starting point is 00:03:31 did in Scotland. Culf actually became an indoor sport and is still played in a few small communities in the Netherlands today. The modern game involves having to hit a post on the opposite end of a court, and then hit the post in the starting end, and then hitting the post and the opposite end again. There was an active amount of trade between the Netherlands and the southeastern coast of Scotland. It's believed that Dutch sailors brought the game of golf with them to Scotland, where it became popular. The word kulf also became golf at some point in Scotland. It may just have been an issue of translation, or it may have been a reference to an old Scottish word meaning to strike.

Starting point is 00:04:08 It isn't known when Culf arrived in Scotland, but in 1457, King James II of Scotland passed a law outlawing the playing of golf and football because it took away from archery practice. Additional bans were placed in 1471 and 1491, but supposedly King James IV had golf clubs and balls given to him as a gift, so people must still have been playing it. In 1567, Mary Queen of Scots was accused of playing golf just days after her husband was murdered, a time when she should have been to be. and morning. While we know something called golf was being played in the 16th century, and that involves sticks and balls, we don't really know what the rules were. In 1636, a schoolmaster from Aberdeen, Scotland, named David Wedderburn, published a Latin grammar textbook for children that made references to golf, as well as mentioning the first golf hole. Many of the locations where Scots would play golf were in areas known as lynx. Today, links are associated with golf, but at the

Starting point is 00:05:06 time in Scotland, it was just a word describing a rough grassy area between the land and the sea. In 1672, Sir John Follos of Edinburgh wrote in his diary that he had played golf at the Musselberg Links, which is evidence used to support its claim that it's the world's oldest golf course. In 1687, Thomas Kincaid, a medical student, wrote an instruction manual for playing golf. The first rules for golf were published in 1744 for the Gentleman Golfers Competition for the Silver Club. A competition sponsored. by the city of Edinburgh, which was to be played at Leith Links. There were 13 rules, known as Leith's Rules, that were listed for the competition.

Starting point is 00:05:46 Over 30 different clubs around Scotland adopted these 13 rules, and it became the basis for the modern game of golf. In 1754, the St. Andrews Society of Golfers was formed to create its own annual competition using Leif's Rules. In 1764, the St. Andrews Club created the world's first 18-hole golf course, which is today the standard. That original 18-hole course is still playable today, and it's known as the old course at St. Andrews. Today, St. Andrews is still considered to be the spiritual home of golf. In the 19th century, golf began to spread outside of Scotland. Clubs and courses began to spread all over England and then around the world. One of the biggest changes was to the ball.

Starting point is 00:06:29 Golf balls in the 18th and early 19th centuries were made of leather and stuffed with feathers. However, balls transitioned to be made out of Gouda Purs. a natural latex found in trees in Southeast Asia. These balls, known as gutties, were easier to produce, were more durable, and provided a more consistent performance. Some golfers began playing for money, and were actually able to make a living at it. In 1860, the Prestwick Golf Club in Scotland established an annual tournament for professional golfers, which was known simply as the Open Championship.

Starting point is 00:07:01 Eight golfers competed in the inaugural event, which was won by Willie Park Sr. The event is still played today, sometimes being known as the British Open, and is one of the four major tournaments in professional golf. While golf was gaining in popularity throughout the 19th century, it exploded in popularity in the last two decades of the century. As people now had more leisure time, more people played golf. To put this into perspective, in 1880, there were 12 golf courses in England. By 1900, just 20 years later, there were a thousand.

Starting point is 00:07:34 In the United States, several clubs formed to organize. competitions, several of which hosted their own national amateur championships. Several of these clubs came together in 1894 in New York City to form the United States Golf Association, or USGA. They hosted the first United States Open Championship in 1895. All of the winners of the tournament were either English or Scottish until 1911. With the explosion of golf, there were still differing rules which were played all over the world. In 1890, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, issued a set of rules which were designed to be used by all golf courses around the world. The USGA, then later largely adopted the St. Andrews rules,

Starting point is 00:08:16 establishing these two organizations as the most important ones in setting the rules of golf. In 1916, a group of club professionals in the United States came together to perform the Professional Golfers Association, or PGA. They hosted their own tournament that year, the PGA Championship, which is today one of the four major tournaments. It should be noted that the PGA and the PGA Championship are separate from the PGA Tour, which split off in 1968. The PGA tour is for professional golfers, and the PGA is for club pros. One of the most significant figures in the history of golf emerged in the 1920s, Bobby Jones. Technically, Jones was a lawyer, and he played golf as an amateur his entire career on a part-time basis. However, despite being an amateur, he was by far the best player in the world.

Starting point is 00:09:04 In 1930, he won all four of golf's major tournaments at that time in a single year, the British Open, the British Open, the U.S. Amateur. Immediately after winning the Grand Slam, he retired from golf at the age of 28. He technically did turn professional, but only so he could make money from films and books. He never made a dime playing competitive golf. He established the Augusta National Golf Course in Augusta, Georgia in 1930, and in 1934, the club hosted their own competition. called the Masters. Given its association with Jones, the tournament attracted all the top players

Starting point is 00:09:40 immediately and quickly became known as the fourth of the major tournaments. If you were to go back in time about 100 years, the rules and courses would look very similar. The biggest difference was the equipment. While the Gutty was the most popular ball, there were no rules about the size or weight. The USGA finally put rules in place regulating the size and weight of a golf ball to make a more level playing field. Golf clubs were originally made completely out of wood. In the 19th century, wood was only used in the shaft, and the head of the club was made out of iron. Clubs made entirely out of steel began appearing in the late 19th century. In the 20th century, advances in material science often found their way quickly into golf clubs and golf balls.

Starting point is 00:10:23 Eventually, the rules of golf began to have very technical regulations for golf equipment that regulated how clubs and balls behaved, not just their weight or what they were made out of. While golf has traditionally been a male sport, women golfers have existed since the game was first established. Babe Diedrickson's Aherius, an Olympic gold medalist, became one of the world's most famous golfers in the 1930s. The United States Women's Open was established in 1946, and the Ladies Professional Golf Association, LGPA, was established in 1950, one of the first professional sports leagues for women. Today, golf is big business. It's both a major professional sport as well as being actively enjoyed by amateurs around the world. It's estimated that there are over 40,000 golf courses around the world, with over 16,700 of them in the United States alone. Over 66 million people in the world play golf, enough that if they were their own country, it would be the 24th largest in the world.

Starting point is 00:11:21 The global golf industry is over $100 billion annually, which is more than the annual GDP. of Venezuela. By any measure, Gulf has become one of the most popular sports and activities on the planet, which isn't too bad for something that started out with a bunch of people hitting rocks with sticks. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Yun Li over on Spotify. They write, My son, Elliot, who is nine years old, listens to your podcast every day before sleep. He loves your podcast. Thanks for producing such an informative. podcast, which is suitable for all ages.

Starting point is 00:12:03 Well, thank you, Yun Li. I'm glad that your son enjoys the show, and I seem to have a big following amongst a certain group of nine-year-olds. As always, as a reminder to all the parents out there, I'll always try to keep any unnecessary foul language out of the show, and I'll make it as clean as history will allow. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram,

Starting point is 00:12:22 you two can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A Brief History of Golf

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