Golf, as we know it today, probably originated in Scotland. But in tracing the beginnings of golf we have to go back hundreds of years before that. In the early days of the Roman Empire, there was a game known as "Paganica". It was played with a leather ball stuffed with feathers, and a bent stick for a club. In England, there is evidence that a game like golf was played as far back as the middle of the fourteenth century. And in the British Museum there is a picture in a book from the sixteenth century which shows three players, each with a ball and club, putting at a hole in the ground. During the fifteenth century, golf was becoming so popular in Scotland that laws were passed forbidding people to play because it was taking up too much of their time! Among other things, the interest in golf was causing people to neglect archery, and it was also interfering with attendance at church on Sundays. Golf has been known since old times as the "royal and ancient" game. This is because royalty seemed to be very fond of it. Jarnes IV, James V, and Mary Stuart all enjoyed the game. Golf clubs began to be founded in the eighteenth century. The first one was probably founded in 1744, The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, founded in 1754, frames and revises the rules of golf. Its decisions arc accepted by clubs everywhere, except in the United States. In 1951, the Royal and Ancient and the U.S. Golf Association agreed upon a uniform code. V In the United States, golf was played as long ago as 1799. But another hundred years passed before golf began to be played in a regular and continuous way in the United Slates. The first golf club in the United States was founded in I888 in Yonkers, New York.
