With the Masters coming up this weekend, here is the history of the game of golf along with the history of the equipment used to play the game.

Golf is believed by most to have originated from a game that was played on the coast of Scotland sometime during the 15th century. Players would hit a pebble around the sand dunes in Scotland using either a club or a stick. Since 1750, the sport of golf has evolved into the game that is acknowledged in today’s game.

As much as this explanation is believed to be the origin of golf, there has been games played much earlier throughout history that has been discovered that closely resembles the game of golf.

Players in Holland, Belgium and France as well as in Scotland played various forms of games resembling golf as early as the fourteenth century.

Recent discoveries proposes that a game that is very similar to golf as we play it today was played in China during the Southern Tang Dynasty, 500 years before golf was ever even mentioned in Scotland.

Even though there have been discoveries of games that resembled golf prior to Scotland’s claim to fame, the fact remains that the game of golf that we play today started and was developed in Scotland. The first actual golf course originated in Scotland as well as the first golf club membership. The very first rules of golf were also written in Scotland. In addition, the creation of the 18-hole golf course began in Scotland as well.

In 1774, the first standardized rules of golf were written and used for the first golf championship in Edinburgh, Scotland. Here they are with their original spellings and words just as they first appeared.

1. You must tee your ball within one club's length of the hole.

2. Your tee must be on the ground.

3. You are not to change the ball which you strike off the tee.

4. 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.

5. 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.

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 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.

9. No man at holeing his ball is to be allowed to mark his way to the hold 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 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.

12. He who 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.

The equipment for the game of golf has changed dramatically throughout the years.

GOLF BALLS

In golf’s beginnings, players who enjoyed the concept of the game soon got tired of hitting pebbles around so they tried to come up with a better idea.

The first man made golf balls were made of wood. Each ball was hand made, which meant that each ball was a different shape, size, and weight making it impossible to keep an even playing field. Wooden balls would dominate golf until the 17^th century.

The next most popular ball was the feathery. They were thin leather balls that were stuffed with feathers and hand sewn closed. You might think that these would be soft, but they were not. The maker would use wet leather to begin with, so once it was stuffed and sewn up, the leather would dry which would make the feather expand and the leather shrink making them very hard. Once dried, they were given three coats of paint. They were now as hard as a rock. These worked for a while, but they did not retain their shape after a few rounds and they did not fly very far either. Because of the time it took to make the balls, they were also expensive too.

In 1848, the gutty was invented. It was named because it was made from gutta-percha, a tough substance from the resin of the Gutta tree in Malaysia. They found they could heat it, shape it, and once it was cooled, it would retain its shape in a hard plastic like texture. For the first time, they could produce a ball that kept its round shape and rolled truer then other balls. Because they could be manufactured with a press, they were also cheaper to make, passing the savings over to the consumer. They also flew much farther then the feathery ball. The Gutty could also be repaired by reheating them and then reshaping them.

Golfers also noticed something about the Gutty balls. The older the balls got, the farther they flew. The reason was that all of the nicks and scars on the ball reduced drag allowing the ball to travel further. At that point, the “bramble” style ball became the most popular ball because the manufacturers would sell the balls with the surface of the ball already roughed up. It was the first textured golf ball. 

In 1898, Coburn Haskell and the BF Goodrich Company invented the Haskell. It had a solid rubber core wrapped with rubber band like thread and then covered with gutta-percha, instead of a solid ball made from the sap of the Gutta tree. This ball was better then the gutty ball and on average traveled 20 yards further as well.

In 1905, golf ball manufacturer William Taylor added the dimple pattern to his balls and golf balls had now taken on their current form. The modern golf ball was born.

GOLF CLUBS

By the 1500s, Scottish golfers were already in the habit of using different clubs for different shots. In the early days, most golfers carved their own clubs out of wood. Eventually, the job was taken over by skilled artisans. Golf club shafts were carved from softer wood, and the heads were carved from a harder wood then the shafts. The shaft and the heads were held together with a splint and twine.

The clubs had different names too. There were Brassies, Baffies, Niblicks, Blasters, and the Putting Cleek.

In the 1800s, forged metal was introduced to the game of golf. From this point on, the game changed by leaps and bounds. Even with the new technology irons, most players, as is today, had a combination of wood-headed clubs and iron headed clubs. The irons had some original names as well, such as Jiggers, Sammys, and Mashies.

In 1938, the USGA standardized the names of the clubs so niblicks, mashies, and cleeks became woods, irons, and putters.

Once the 1900s rolled around, a big breakthrough in club technology was introduced. The heads of the clubs changed from smooth faces to grooved faces, which gave the ball more control, distance, and backspin. Modern technology also enabled the first consistent quality of the clubs and the day of an entire bag of matching clubs had arrived.

In the mid 1900s, steel took over replacing the old wooden shafts. Steel shafts were more flexible, increasing distance and they did not break or crack in normal play.

In the 1960s, aluminum shafts were introduced. They were much lighter then steel which gave the golfer better swing speed. The problem was that aluminum is a soft metal, and they would bend.

In 1968, graphite shafts showed up. Graphite is stronger, lighter, and gives the shaft much more resilience and flexibility.

In the 1980s, the game of golf changed forever. Not only was titanium, which is even lighter and stronger then graphite, introduced for golf club shafts, but also it is now rare to hear that distinct “whack” when a ball is hit with a wood. Woods are technically now made of metal and the sound is a distinct “ping”.    

GOLF TEES

In inspecting a golf tee today, you would have to imagine that something such as simple as that was probably very easy to come by. Well guess what, it took more then 30 years to come up the design we use today.

In the beginning, the player teed up his ball by building a little mound with wet sand and placing his ball on top of it.

In 1889, Scottish inventors and golfers William Bloxsom and Arthur Douglas patented the first golf tee. Their tee was a rubber slab and had three vertical rubber prongs to hold the ball in place. It did not stick into the ground like the modern tee; it was just set on the ground. Although it was a step in the right direction, most golfers still used the mound of wet sand.

In 1892, a British patent was granted to Percy Ellis for his "Perfectum" tee that did penetrate the ground. It was a rubber circle to hold the ball and was attached to a metal spike to anchor it into the ground.  

Scotsmen PM Matthews patented the 1897 “Victor” and his tee was similar but included a cup-shaped top to better hold the golf ball.

Also in 1897, in the United States, David Dalziel was issued an American patent for his golf tee design. Ironically, Dalziel was also a Scotsman. His tee was a one-piece rubber tee with a flat base that just sat on the ground. However, the most important aspect of his tee was that it had a concaved top, closest to the modern golf tee.

Two American dentists are actually responsible for the modern tee we use today. First came Dr. George Grant in 1899. His tee was a rubber-topped peg that stuck into the ground. He received a patent for his design, but it did not have a concaved head, and he lost interest in pursuing it any further.

Twenty years later, Dr. William Lowell created a golf tee that was as simple and artistic as one of his well-crafted dental bridges. He called his invention the “Reddy Tee” and it was the familiar shape of the golf tee that we know today. It was made of wood and painted white with a red top to resemble a freshly pulled tooth. It was a huge success and today more then two billion of them are pushed into the ground every year.