ORIGIN OF GOLF.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3148, 18 December 1922, Page 8

ORIGIN OF GOLF.

The origin of the ancient and royal game of golf is involved in some obscurity. Though it is the national game of Scotland, it is not known at what remote period' it was first played in that country, whether it originated' there or was. introduced 1 from abroad, but the earliest recorded mention of it bears date March, 1457, when the Scottish Parliament ord'ained "that the Futoball and Golf be utterlio criet downe and not tisit." Probably this would be because the games interfered with the practice ol" archery. Again and again we finld golf denounced, but so popular was the game in Scotland' in tho 16th century that wc come across frequent, denunciations of playing it on Sundavs (savs the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle). We find, in the following century, two martyrs of the game prosecuted for "playing Gown on the. Links of Leith every Sabbath." and; at Perth, in 160-1, another suffered in the same cause, and sat on the stool of repentance. It is worthy of remark that there is still to be seen in the town Kirk of St. Andrew's, that great stronghold of golf, the old stool ol repentance, in which many Sabbathbreaking players of the game may have sat.

Golf was. an aristocratic, as well as a popular game, and much played by Rovaltv and the nobility. In 1503, in the Roval Accounts of Scotland, we find ".€2 2s for the King to play at Gowff with the Earl of Bothwell." According to the same accounts only nine shillings were paid for the Royal goll clulis and balls. Clubs cost a shilling each, and the balls four shillings the dozen. Golf balls were at that period made of leather, stuffed with feathers, and we have evidence that thev were made in Holland and imported into Great Britain in 161 H. With regard, again, to golfing on the Sabbath, so frequently denounced in Scotland in early days, later on we find that King .James VI. (James 1. of England) rebuking the precise people, and declaring his pleasure to be "that after Divine Service, our good people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawful recreation" (which, of course, included goll); but the same Royal pronouncement prohibited these amusements "to any that are not present at the service ol God before their going to the said recreations."

Charles T. reiterated this ruling of his father, and he, himself, is represented in a historical picture receiving the news of the outbreak of the Irish Re* hellion in 1642, while m a golf match on the links of Leith; and when he was, four years later, held prisoner in Newcastle by the Scots, we read that lie had the permission of his gaolers occasionally to play golf in the Shieldfield'.

During many years golf. like other things mundane, had its ups and downs of fortune. In Scotland its progress was greatly crippled by the old prejudice against playing it on Sunday, the onlv holidav which many of the people had. By the year 1844 it had ceased to be a popular game in that country; and in Great Britain generally had fallen greatly from its whilom high estate. It is interesting to speculate whether it would not have died out altogether but for the discovery of tihe use of gutta. percha as a material for the balls used in the game, in place of continuing to make them of leather stuffed with feathers. Probably the date is not known at which the change was made, but by the middle of the nineteenth century the gutta had taken the place of the feathers universally. Balls of the new material had the great merit, among other advantages, of economy in price, being immensely cheaper, and, moreover, lasting much longer than the old. Had gutta, percha balls not been introduced, it is likely enough that golf itself would now be on the list of virtually extinct pastimes. It is a singular fact that so distant a place as Calcutta has the oldest British golf club south of the Tweed, Blackheatb excepted.