Who invented the game of golf?

Well, who really invented the game of golf? The question has been asked and discussed for many years without a real winner. Many countries have a valid right to an early game that resembles the game of golf. Some of the countries that make this claim are England. Scotland, China, Rome, France, Holland, Belgium and Laos. The most heated debate over who invented golf definitely comes from Great Britain and Scotland.

The first area to consider in deciding the answer to our question should be what actually determines whether a game with clubs and balls is golf or another game. Most countries in the world have had games where you hit an object with a stick into some sort of target. Is this enough to call it golf? I don’t believe it. If so, these early games could claim the origin of many sports played today. I think it takes more than just a game with some kind of object hit by a club to qualify as the origin of golf.

The Netherlands is believed to be the origin of the name of golf, but not of the game itself. The Netherlands played a game in the 1200s called Colf, which means clubs. This was a form of golf, but once again the form of many other sports.

Colf dates back to December 26, 1297, in the town of Loenen aan de Vecht in the northern Netherlands. On that day, the townspeople played four holes to commemorate the uprising of Kronenburg Castle exactly one year earlier. The fact that colf was chosen to mark the occasion is proof that the game was already popular at the time.

Great Britain The earliest traces of golf history in which golf is played is said to date back to 1340, where in a stained glass sketch, the Great East Window, in the east wing of Gloucester Cathedral, England, scenes from the Battle of Crecy in France showed a man apparently preparing to hit a ball like golf.

One of the earliest forms of golf lacked an important ingredient in its games to make the game truly golf and that was the hole. It is widely believed that Scotland was the first country to put all the ingredients together and actually started a primitive form of the great game of golf.

Yes, this will always be a disputed point, who really invented the game of golf. If you believe some of the claims that the game they were playing was golf and they didn’t have a hole, then you could take this very game and make it the origin of many games we still play today. I think the hole is what separates all the initial claims about who originated the game of golf.

Look at our History of Golf section on the World of Golf Handicap for more detailed information on the History of Golf.

http://www.dave-and-maggie-world-of-golf-handicap.com/golf-history.html