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Golf
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With
all due respect to my friend Peter, and avid golfers out there, I have an incredibly strong bias against golf.
A "friend" of mine suggested, several years ago, that I try golf. She assured me that I would absolutely love
it, once I tried it. I tried playing golf, twice, and I absolutely hate it! Mark Twain is quoted as having
said, "Golf is a good walk spoiled." In my opinion, golf isn't a good anything! I cannot believe that
anyone would want to hit a #@&! ball, and then go chase it. (And then, maybe not
even find it.) A reason I love baseball, aside from the fact it's a thinking person's sport, is that when I hit the
ball, someone else has to chase it. And, if they can't find it, well, that's too bad. It's no concern of
mine. Anyway, here's some trivia about golf. In my opinion, we should just give it back to the Scots and forget
about it.
PAGE CONTENTS:
Golf Defined
Top 10 Reasons Why Golf Is Better Than Sex
The Laws of Golf
History of Golf and Equipment
The Illustrious History of Scottish Golf
How Golf is like Urinating in a Public Restroom
The most popular sport with American adults ages 20-29 is golf, followed
by mountain biking and snowboarding. Of course, whether or not golf qualifies as a sport in the same category as football,
soccer, mountain biking, running, et. al. is a debate this column does not wish to actually enter.
It is an internet myth that the name of the popular Scottish game
Golf stands for "Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden." The word golf originates form medieval Scottish and Dutch dialects. Back
in a day before the creation of dictionaries, there was no standardized spelling of any given word. So it is believed that
word golf originates from Dutch word "kolf" or "kolve" which meant "club." Later on old Scots dialect transformed the word
into "gouf" or "golve ."
The first
golf car was invented in the late 1940s strictly for people with disabilities.
GOLF DEFINED
GOLF, n.
1. A game that consists of
a lot of walking, broken up by disappointment and bad arithmetic.
2. A game of opposites - the world's slowest people are
ahead of you, and the fastest are behind.
3. A colorful sport that keeps you on the green, in the pink, and financially
in the red.
4. A game which is allowed to be played on Sunday (under blue laws) because it was not considered a game by
the law, but a form of moral effort.
5. A game a lot like taxation - you drive hard to get to the green, and then you find
yourself in a hole.
GOLF CART, n.
1. A popular mode of transportation because, unlike a caddie,
it can neither count, criticize, nor snicker.
GOLFER, n.
1. A person who yells "fore," takes six,
and puts down five;
2. A guy who has the advantage over a fisherman - he doesn't have to bring home anything when he brags
he had a great day.
Golf was banned in England and Scotland in 1457 by King James
II because he claimed it distracted people from the archery practice necessary for national defense.
Fore
The golf term "fore" was shortened
from the old military term, "ware before." This command was shouted to the front line to kneel so the second line could fire.
It caught on after one poor soldier didn't heed the warning and spent the rest of his military career with the nickname, "Earless
Jackson."
(Source: LIFE'S IMPONDERABLES)
HOW WIDE IS A GOLF HOLE? HOW DEEP IS IT?
It
is 4.25 inches in diameter and at least 4 inches deep.
WHO INTRODUCED THE WORD CADDIE TO GOLF?
The
first female golfer, Mary, Queen of Scots, who used the French word cadet, which meant "little chief."
Why is the person who helps a golfer called a
caddy?
The word caddy (or caddie, as its sometimes spelled) comes from France, via Scotland, and is a corruption
of "cadet." In France a cadet was a rich man's younger son. Since the eldest son inherited the whole estate, any males born
after him often joined the army, which gives us the military sense of cadet. Eventually cadet came to mean someone who did
lowly work, a "go-for" or errand boy--just the kind of person to serve another person who wants only to putter around.
(Source:
WHO PUT THE BUTTER IN BUTTERFLY? by David Feldman)
Why do golf balls have dimples?
Because they act as "turbulators,"
inducing turbulance in the layer of air next to the ball (the boundary layer) which, in some situations, will reduce drag.
Originally golf balls were smooth, but golfers noticed that older, beat up balls with nicks, bumps and slices in the cover
seemed to fly further. At some point an aerodynamicist must have looked at this problem and came up with the turbulators solution.
The dimples were added as a formal, symmetrical way of creating the same turbulence in the boundary layer that random nicks
and cuts do.
Top ten reasons golf is better then SEX:
#10 - A below par performance is considered damn good.
#9 - You can stop in the middle and have a cheeseburger and a couple of
beers.
#8 - It's much easier to find the sweet spot.
#7 - Foursomes are encouraged.
#6 - You can still make money doing it as a senior.
#5 - Three times a day is possible
#4 - Your partner doesn't hire a lawyer if you do it with someone else.
#3 - If you live in Florida, you can do it almost every day.
#2 - You don't have to cuddle with your partner when you're finished.
AND the #1 reason why Golf is better than Sex...
If your equipment gets old and worn, you can replace it.
The Laws Of Golf:
LAW 1: No matter how bad your
last shot was, the worst is yet to come. This law does not expire on the 18th hole, since it has the supernatural tendency
to extend over the course of a tournament, a summer and, eventually, a lifetime.
LAW 2: Your best round of golf will
be followed almost immediately by your worst round ever. The probability of the latter increases with the number of people
you tell about the former.
LAW 3: Brand new golf balls are water-magnetic. Though this cannot be proven in the lab,
it is a known fact that the more expensive the golf ball, the greater its attraction to water.
LAW 4: Golf balls from
the same "sleeve" tend to follow one another, particularly out of bounds or into the water (see law three).
LAW 5:
Golf balls never bounce off the trees back into play. If one does, the tree is breaking a law of the universe and should be
cut down.
LAW 6: No matter what causes a golfer to muff a shot, all his playing partners must solemnly chant 'You
looked up' or invoke the wrath of the universe.
LAW 7: The higher a golfers handicap, the more qualified he deems
himself as an instructor.
LAW 8: The person you would most hate to lose too will always be the one who beats you.
History of Golf & Golf Equipment
Golf originated from a game played on the coast of Scotland
during the 15th century. Golfers would hit a pebble instead of a ball around the sand dunes using a stick or club. After 1750,
golf evolved into the sport as we recognize it today. In 1774, Edinburgh golfers wrote the first standardized rules for
the game of golf.
Golf Balls
Golfers soon tired of hitting pebbles and tried other things.
The earliest man-made golf balls included thin leather bags stuffed with feathers (they did not fly very far).
The gutta-percha ball was invented in 1848 by Reverend Adam Paterson.
Made from the sap of the Gutta tree, this ball could be hit a maximum distance of 225 yards and was very similar to its modern
counterpart.
In 1898, Coburn Haskell introduced the first one-piece rubber cored,
when professionally hit these balls reached distances approaching 430 yards. According to "The Dimpled Golf Ball" by Vincent
Mallette during the early days of golf the balls were smooth.
Players noticed that as balls became old and scarred, they traveled farther.
After a while players would take new balls and intentionally pit them.
In 1905, golf ball manufacturer William Taylor was the first to add the
dimple pattern using the Coburn Haskell ball. Golf balls had now taken on their modern form.
Golf Clubs
Golf clubs have evolved from wooden shaft clubs to today's sets of woods
and irons with durability, weight distribution and graduation utility. The evolution of clubs went hand in hand with the evolution
of golf balls that were able to withstand harder whacks.
Carrying & Caddies
During the 1880s, golf bags first came into use. "The beast of burden"
is an old nickname for the caddie who carried golfers' equipment for them. The first powered golf car appeared around 1962
and was invented by Merlin L. Halvorson.
Golf Tees
The word "tee" as it relates to the game of golf originated as the name
for the area where a golfer played. In 1899, the first documented portable golf tee was invented by Scottish golfers William
Bloxsom and Arthur Douglas. This golf tee was made from rubber and had three vertical rubber prongs that held the ball in
place. However, it lay on the ground and did not piece the ground like modern golf tees.
In 1892, a British patent was granted to Percy Ellis for his "Perfectum"
tee that did piece the ground. It was a rubber tee with a metal spike. The 1897 "Victor" tee was similar and included a cup-shaped
top to better hold the golf ball. The Vicktor was patented by Scotsmen PM Matthews.
American patents for golf tees include: the first American patent issued
to Scotsmen David Dalziel in 1895, the 1895 patent issued to American Prosper Senat, and the 1899 patent for an improved golf
tee issued to George Grant.
The Thirteen Rules of the Gentlemen Golfers of Edinburgh
In 1774, the first standardized rules of golf were written and used
for the first golf championship, which was won by Doctor John Rattray on 2nd April 1744 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
- You must tee your ball within one club's length of the hole.
- Your tee must be on the ground.
- You are not to change the ball which you strike off the tee.
- You are not to remove stones, bones or any break club for the sake of
playing your ball, except on the fair green, and that only within a club's length of your ball.
- If your ball comes among water, or any watery filth, you are at liberty
to take out your ball and bringing it behind the hazard and teeing it, you may play it with any club and allow your adversary
a stroke for so getting out your ball.
- If your balls be found anywhere touching one another you are to lift the
first ball till you play the last.
- At holeing you are to play your ball honestly for the hole, and not to
play upon your adversary's ball, not lying in your way to the hole.
- If you should lose your ball, by its being taken up, or any other way,
you are to go back to the spot where you struck last and drop another ball and allow your adversary a stroke for the misfortune.
- No man at holeing his ball is to be allowed to mark his way to the hold
with his club or anything else.
- If a ball be stopp'd by any person, horse or dog, or anything else, the
ball so stopp'd must be played where it lyes.
- If you draw your club in order to strike and proceed so far in the stroke
as to be bringing down your club; if then your club shall break in any way, it is to be accounted a stroke.
- He who whose ball lyes farthest from the hole is obliged to play first.
- Neither trench, ditch or dyke made for the preservation of the links,
nor the Scholar's Holes or the soldier's lines shall be accounted a hazard but the ball is to be taken out, teed and play'd
with any iron club.
©2006 About, Inc., A part of The New York Times Company. All
rights reserved.
Battles Lost But A Game Won
The Illustrious
History of Scottish Golf
by Malcolm Campbell
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.
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.
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 prowesss 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.
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.
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.
Reprinted with permission from Scotland Golf.
© Copyright 1997-2006, Tekware, S.A.
How Golf is like Urinating in a Public Restroom
10. Keep your back straight, knees bent, feet shoulder width
apart.
9. Form a loose grip.
8. Keep your head down.
7. Avoid a quick backswing.
6. Stay out of the water.
5. Try not to hit anybody.
4. If you are taking too long, you should let others go ahead of you.
3. You shouldn't
stand directly in front of others.
2. Be quiet while others are about to go.
1. Keep strokes to a minimum.
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