The Royal and Ancient game had been flourishing on
the links of Scotland long before Mary Queen of Scots found herself
severely rebuked for playing golf at Seton House disrespectfully soon
after the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley, in 1567
It is known that golf was played at St. Andrews
before the founding of the University there in 1411, and there is
sufficient evidence to make a safe assumption that it was being played
there in one form or another maybe even a century before that.
"jeu de mail" |
"kolven"
The history of the game as we know it today is
therefore contained within the record of Scottish golf. There
have been counter-evolutionary claims in Europe, principally by
the French and the Dutch but the cases are essentially flawed.
The Dutch cite the club and ball game of "kolven" as
evidence of their claim; the French "jeu de mail".
They stand as nothing but imposters for both lacked the single,
simple element which makes golf unique - the hole. |
Golf stands alone in that the object of the
exercise is to propel a ball across a course liberally littered with
obstacles designed to prevent that accomplishment, from a starting point
where the ball is balanced in mid-air to another point at which it
finishes below ground.
The hole is the vital factor in separating golf
from the other club and ball games, and it was the Scots who introduced
it.
As such, it was national pastime more than 400 years before Bonnie
Prince Charlie fled in defeat from Culloden in 1746 and long, too,
before another ignominious Scots' defeat at the hands of the English in
1513, when they lost their king and the flower of their noble families
at the Battle of Flodden Field.
Indeed, it is not difficult to make a case that
golf was a contributing factor in the latter of these two merciless
reverses.
At Flodden, the Scots were no match for the
English archers in the first assault and were eventually routed. It was
only a matter of 50 years earlier that King James II of Scotland had
been so concerned that golf was adversely interfering with archery
practice that he banned the game in the Scottish Act of Parliament of
1457 - the first documented reference to today's game. Golf was also
banned by James III in 1471.
James III
Banned golf for the second time by Royal Decree. |
Marquis of Montrose
A keen player, is credited with bringing golf to his town. |
There is every evidence the Scots took no notice
whatsoever of the ban and that archery practice continued to decline.
Subsequent bans were introduce only to be just as widely ignored. And on
Flodden Field the ability to hit the long running draw was simply no
substitute for prowess with bow and arrow. The nation's collective
ability to play golf had clearly grown in equal proportion to the
decline in its ability as marksmen.
How golf actually originated will remain a
mystery. It is a subject which has taxed the brains and research of
eminent and learned men, but no irrefutable evidence has been found. One
theory, and it is as good as any other so far put forward, is that
fishermen on the east coast of Scotland invented the game to amuse
themselves as they returned home from their boats.
What would be more natural than for a young
fisherman, making his way across the rolling stretches of fine turf
among the sand dunes, to pick up a crooked stick of driftwood and aim a
blow at a pebble? If he knocked the pebble forward, the competitive
instinct in man would demand that he hit it again to see if he could
send it further.
If the pebble rolled into a sandy hollow where
sheep had huddled for shelter against the icy blast, he would have been
playing from the first bunker. It then requires no great leap of the
imagination to develop that scene into a game between competing
fishermen played across the links from boat to village, finishing at the
same point each time, perhaps close to the local hostelry. If the pebble
when last struck fell into a rabbit hole, then the game of golf would
certainly have been "invented" and the forerunner of the 19th
hole along with it.
As to where the game was first played in Scotland,
there can only be conjecture. Much of the early evidence of golf in
Scotland is found in Kirk Session (church court) records in the 16th and
17th centuries. In many parts of Scotland's east coast, parishioners
were being punished for playing golf "at the time of the preaching
of the Sermon". At St. Andrews in 1599, miscreants were fined small
sums for the first two offenses before the use of "the repentance
pillar". After that the culprits were "deprived of
office" - excommunicated!
During the 16th century the game became firmly
established on the east coast of Scotland and began to spread further
afield. By this time the game had gained respectability among the
highest levels of society in the land and was certainly played by James
VI of Scotland before he acceded to the English throne as James I in
1603.
His mother, Mary Queen of Scots,
as we have already seen, was a committed player. We know that
she played golf with one of her attendants, Mary Seton, because
the queen lost a match against her and presented her conqueror
with a still famous necklace.
Mary Queen of Scots on her way
to the first tee.
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But royal interest in the game goes back
further even than that. Golf was played as far north as Montrose and had
moved inland to Perth by the beginning of the 16th century, probably
taken there by King James IV, grandson of the Scottish King who had
tried to ban the game.
James IV, in his turn, tried to stop the Scots
playing golf, but eventually he was converted to the game. By 1501 his
treasurer had paid 14 shilling to a bowmaker in Perth to supply clubs.
From then onwards there was a series of bills paid from the royal
coffers for golf balls, and even for his lost bets. There is one account
of the royal treasurer having to pay the Earl of Bothwell 14 shillings
the King had lost in a wager on golfing combat somewhere out on the
links.
It was the royal influence that helped the spread
of the game throughout the country and, ultimately, to its export
further afield. The earliest centres of golf all had associations with
royalty or, in the case of St. Andrews, the two other influential
pillars of Scots society - education and the Chruch. St. Andrews is
Scotland's oldest seat of learning and it was also a powerful Church
stronghold.
Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, was the
headquarters of the court and golf blossomed around the city aided by
royal patronage. There were roayl palaces also at Dunfermline and Perth
and they, too, developed strong golf connections.
The Bishop of Galloway is credited with the spread
of the game to the south-west of the country, probably through court
connections. The Marquis of Montrose was another keen player, which may
well account for the town having its early links with golf.
By the start of the 17th century, golf was
actively pursued from the south-east of the country to as far north as
the remote and windswept Orkney Islands.
Despites its popularity, it was another 150 years
before efforts were made to bring organisation to the game of golf. The
first stirring of this desire for a formal structure was seen during the
17th century when the development of a universally accepted set of rules
were formed.
The earliest club for which there documented proof
is the Gentlemen Golfers of Leith, later to become the Honourable
Company of Edinburgh Golfers, instituted in 1744, when the first ball
was attached to a silver club donated by the Edinburgh City Council. The
first winner, John Rattray, was declared Captain of the Golf and it
became tradition for the winner of the silver club to be Captain the
next year.
That is why today the Captain of the Royal and
Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, who is now elected by a committee of
former captains, has to "play himself in" at the start of the
club's autumn medal competition in September. To preserve the tradition
of the winner being captain for the year, he is the only competitor in
the event and once he has struck his first stroke he automatically
becomes the winner. A cannon sounds to mark the start of the medal and
with it the Captain's victory, and the caddie who retrieves the
captain's ball after his drive is presented with a gold sovereign.
The R & A purchased its silver club in 1754 as
the Society of St. Andrews Golfers but was granted the title Royal and
Ancient by King William IV in 1834.
The latter part of the 19th century saw the major
development of the game in Scotland, with the construction of many new
courses. The development of the rail network, was a contributing factor,
but it was the arrival of the gutta percha ball, around 1880, that was
the single major factor in the explosion of the popularity of the game
both in Scotland and further afield.
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The feathery consisted of a horse
or bull-hide cover stuffed with feathers. |
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Early clubs were as much a place
to drink vast quantities of claret. It is no surprise then that
the Open Championship Trophy is a claret jug. |
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Early caddies carried their
player's clubs in their arms. Later crude bags were fashioned,
making the caddie's job a lot easier. |
Until then a leather pouch laboriously filled with
boiled goose feathers had served as the ball. They were expensive to
make, easily damaged and very few could afford them. The arrival of the
gutty ball, made from rubber which could be heated and formed into a
ball, revolutionized the game and allowed its spread to the masses. The
early clubs were as much a place to eat and drink vast quantities of
claret as they were for the more healthful pursuit of golf. It is no
coincidence that the Open Championship trophy is a claret jug, and it
would be hard to find an exception to the rule that the majority of golf
clubs were formed by small groups of like-minded souls brought together
in drinking and eating establishments of one sort or another.
Once the clubs were formed, members could more
easily combine their appetites for all three activities.
Perhaps little has substantially changed in the
last 250 years.
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