History of Golf - Part One: The Beginnings

Since the beginning of time, man has preoccupied himself with a stick and a rock, making his drudgery into a game.
 
In the earliest of times he swung the stick at the rock, propelling it towards some predetermined destination. This, it can be said, was the precursor of golf. Unfortunately, it also is the precursor to just about all the sports that require a ball and some object to propel it.
 
What country invented ‘golf?’ Many countries did. If there were sticks and objects that could be hurtled along, then there was ‘golf.’ Though the name didn’t come into being until some time in the 15th century, there were many, many games of early man that could be called an ancestor to golf.
 
Nearly every area around the world has some claim to the origination of golf. Scotland, of course, has its claim. But so do China, Rome, England, France, Holland, Belgium, even Laos. Every country has a game consisting of sticks and balls, and every country is correct in its assumption that it invented the game. But there is no one country where ‘golf’ actually began.

Some say that it was first played by shepherds tending their flocks, passing the time by hitting rocks to targets with their shafts. Games would have developed between competing shepherds, playing across links land and back to their villages.
 
One theory is that fishermen on the east coast of Scotland invented the game to amuse themselves as they returned home from their boats.
 
Other games which included a ball, a stick and some form of a target included ‘paganica’in Rome, a Celtic game called ‘shinty,’ and ‘khi’ in Laos. The Chinese claim a form of golf – ch’ui wan (“beating a ball”) – was played as early as 300 BC. The Roman scribe Catullas describes the game of ‘pangea’ – an ancient forerunner of modern hockey and hurling.
 
Roman emperors in Caesar’s empire apparently played the relaxing game of paganica using a bent stick to drive a soft, hair-filled or feather-stuffed ball. The use of hair-filled balls can be traced to the spread of the Roman empire, and similar balls were later used in Europe. Over the next five centuries, the game developed on several continents.
 
Shepherds’ implements were definitely used in games to hit rocks, we know. In 1338, German shepherds were granted special dispensation to mark their territories by striking a pebble with their crooks. The distance covered was the extent of their grazing rights, a serious use of the rules of the game.
 
The Irish played a very rough game called “camanachd” and the English played a game, “cambuca,” in the 1300s. The goal of cambuca is unclear and it may have even been a competition between enemies with one attacking and one defending.
 
The late Dutch golf historian Steven J. H. van Hengel, acknowledged as one of the foremost experts of the origins of golf, believes that golf was probably a mixture of the implements used in ‘chole’ and the rules of ‘jeu de mail,’ both games imported into Holland.
 
Chole, which still survives in Belgium and under the name of ‘soule’ in Northern France, is a halfway stage between hockey and golf. A cemetery gate, a door, a big rock or other large object – often as far distant as 12 miles away – could serve as the ‘goal.’ One player or side would get three strokes at the object, after which the opponent or opponents would get to whack the object in the opposite direction (dechole).