Let’s take a brief journey back to a time when golf was played on ugly fairways with wooden staffs and leather balls packed with bird feathers.

atching current professional golfers duke it out on pristine, perfectly manicured golf courses using state-of-the-art golf equipment, it’s easy to forget that golf in its early years was not so high-tech nor were the courses so pretty. Modern golf as we know it originated and was later developed in Scotland in the kingdom of Fife beginning in the 12th century. Its definition is simply “playing a ball with a club from the teeing ground into the hole by a stroke or successive strokes in accordance with the rules.”

The Musselburgh Old Links Golf Course in Scotland is considered the grandfather of all golf courses wherein golf was played in 1672. It is even said that Mary, Queen of Scots reputedly played at this truly ‘ancient course’ in 1567. In fact, the word “caddy” derives from the military cadets that Mary, Queen of Scots utilised as helpers during her rounds of golf.

Leith Course near Edinburough, Scotland was the venue for the first international golf tournament in 1682 wherein the then Duke of York and George Patterson playing for Scotland beat two English noblemen.

In terms of early play, golf had as few as 11 holes to as many as 22 until the 18-hole standard was implemented in the late 18th century. The Gentlemen Golfers of Leith (1744) was the first golf club and was formed to promote an annual competition with a silver golf club as the prize. Duncan Forbes drafted the club’s rules which included 13 basic rules of play. In sharp contrast, rules of golf today comprises a whopping 132 pages of text and approximately 40,000 words!

The St Andrews Society of Golfers was formed in 1754 to compete in it’s own annual competition using Leith’s rules. Stroke play was introduced in 1759; and in 1764, the 18-hole course was constructed which has of course become a de facto standard. The first women’s golf club in the world was formed there a century later in 1895. King William honoured the club with the title “Royal & Ancient” in 1834, and the new famous clubhouse was erected in 1854. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews (R&A) became the premier golf club because of its fine course, the publication of rules, its royal patronage and its promotion of the game as a proper sport.

The first golf club formed outside Scotland was Royal Blackheath (near London) in 1766. However, golf is believed to have been played there since 1608. Through various innovations in golf technology, not only did golf become a professional sport, it allowed non-affluent people the opportunity to play this often frustrating yet intriguing game.

In its early stages, golf club heads were made from beech or the wood of fruit trees such as apple. Some club heads were made from handforged iron. Shafts were usually ash or hazel. Golf balls were made from tightly compressed feathers wrapped in a stitched horse hide sphere (featheries). The sport was exclusive due to the price of the handcrafted equipment. After 1826, persimmon and hickory were imported from America to make club heads and shafts respectively.

Back then, golf equipment was handcrafted and expensive, making it a sport reserved for the upper class. Once metal club heads and shafts and “gutta percha” balls appeared in the mid- 1800s, the average person can afford to play golf. All these factors contributed to the phenomenal growth of golf.

The 20th century offered more technological innovations. The first was the Haskell one-piece rubber cored ball of 1900. Grooved-faced irons were introduced in 1902. In 1905, William Taylor invented the first dimpled ball. Arthur Knight introduced steelshafted clubs in 1910, though hickory was widely used for another 25 years. Within the space of a decade, golfers could hit further and more accurately than ever before using mass-produced equipment which was relatively cheap.

In 1921, the R&A imposed a limit on the size and weight of the standard golf ball which began a 30 year split between the European and Commonwealth gaming body and the US gaming body. Most of the differences were resolved in 1951 when both parties agreed to a common set of rules. However the tricky golf ball issue was not settled until much later in 1988.

On a similar note, the R&A and USGA have published a list of non-conforming golf clubs which can be seen at their websites. After 1 January 2008, players will be disqualified if they are found using any non-conforming club (usually some pre-2008 drivers made utilising Japanese manufacturing specifications). The faces of these clubs have a trampoline effect , resulting in longer ball flights than would be ‘naturally’ executed by the golfer.

Golf balls are now available in two-piece, three-piece and even four-piece construction. Some golf ball manufacturers even offer golf balls with liquid filled cores. Even though there are standard requirements for golf balls, manufacturers are pushing the envelope with technology that skirts official sensors. Much like the Super Bouncey Ball toys, some sheer distance golf balls shoot off clubs like small meteorites. And the faster they are hit, the farther they will go, regardless of the golfer’s overall strength.

Currently, issues such as club groove specifications and golf ball manufacturing processes are being scrutinised by golf’s governing bodies. Basically, the concern is that the long distances that professionals (and some amateurs) can reach using today’s advanced equipment is making a mockery out of the previously strategic and more subtle aspects of the game, not to mention making so-called “short par 72 courses” unchallenging for touring pros and power hitters.

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