History of Golf - Part Three: The 18th and 19th Centuries - 07/10/2002

The sport of golf, which seemed like such a staple in Britain in the 1600s and early 1700s, slowly faded in the latter 1700s. The Industrial Revolution was about to blossom, towns were expanding, and the old links were quickly being gobbled up for more industrious pursuits.
 
Town centers decayed, along with town finances. Epidemics swept through the countryside and many old courses were turned into burial plots. Men slowly migrated to the numerous factories that were constantly springing up, working many overtime hours. Sundays were the only off-days, a time just long enough to rest from the back-breaking work and get ready for Mondays.
 
The sport might well have died altogether were not for the Freemasons. Their enthusiasm alone virtually sustained the game from extinction. For about 100 years, from 1750 to 1850, they played the game with regularity. Golfing societies slowly formed, which were mostly members of the Freemasons. Royalty played very little or none at all during this period, but golf was kept alive by the Freemason groups.
 
Edinburgh, Scotland, claimed the first golfing society. The Gentlemen Golfers – later known as the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers and today in residence at Muirfield – claim their club was already under way in 1744, when they petitioned the city of Edinburgh for a “silver club” for annual competition on the Links at Leith. Leith was a port town only a short distance from Edinburgh. This was followed in 1754 by the gentlemen of St. Andrews, Scotland, banding together to form the St. Andrews Golf Club. St. Andrews is today known as the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.
 
The Royal Burgess Golfing Society of Edinburgh also puts forth a claim to have been the first golf club. They claim to have been in existence since l735, but those claims appear largely unsubstantiated. At any rate, the earliest golf societies seemed to be as preoccupied with dining as they were with golf. Numerous references in the early journals are made to dinners and not many to golf. Such would be the nature of the Freemasons, who were very big on pomp and circumstance and such fineries as meals served just so.
 
St. Andrews eventually became the traditional center of all golf, thanks partly to a publicity stunt. The Society of St. Andrews Golfers had an open competition – everyone was invited, regardless if he were a member of the society or not. St. Andrews contributed a silver club to the winner. In a short time, St. Andrews became the premier golfing town. And in 1764, when the St. Andrews course finally settled on 18 holes (down from its previous 22), 18 became the accepted number for all golf courses.
 
With golf spreading across city boundaries and matches being played among competitors from several regions, written rules began to appear. The first such written set is for the Edinburgh competition by the Gentleman Golfers in 1744:

1. You must Tee your Ball within a Club’s length of the Hole;
2. Your Tee (area from which the ball was hit) must be on the ground;
3. You are not to change the Ball which you Strike off the Tee before that hole is played out;
4. You are not to remove any Stones, Bones any Break Club, for the sake of playing your Ball, except of the fair Green, & that only with one Club’s length of your Ball;
5. If your Ball come among Watter or any Wattery filth, you are at liberty to take out your Ball & bringing it behind the hazard and teeing it, you may play it with any Club and allow your adversary a stroke;
6. If your Balls be found anywhere touching one another you are to lift the first ball till you play the last;
7. 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;
8. If you shou’d lose your Ball, by its being taken up or any other way you are to go back to the Spot, where you struck last, & drop another Ball. And allow your adversary a Stroke for the misfortune;
9. No man at holeing his Ball is to be allow’d to mark his way to the hole with his Club or anything else;
10. 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;
11. If you draw your Club, in order to strike & proceed so far in your stroke, as to be bringing down your Club; if then your Club shall break in any way, it is to be accounted a stroke;
12. He whose Ball lyes farthest from the hole is obliged to play first;
13. 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.