Where golf came from.

The 1457 ban

The National Library of Scotland (NLS) dates an Act of Parliament under King James II, banning both golf and football, to 6 March 1457. It calls this the earliest known written mention of golf in Scotland. According to Wikipedia, the reason was military: the games were thought to be keeping men away from the archery practice the country needed for its defence.

NLS says the ban was restated in later Acts of 1471 and 1491. The year of the second Act is not settled: NLS and Wikipedia's history article give 1471, while Wikipedia's timeline article gives 1470, under James III.

By 1502 the crown itself was buying clubs. NLS records expensive hand-made clubs bought for King James IV at Perth that year, and further clubs obtained in Edinburgh and St Andrews, probably made by local bow-makers. Secondary sources do not agree on what ended the bans: Wikipedia's timeline links it to the Treaty of Perpetual Peace between Scotland and England, while an ANSI blog names a "Treaty of Glasgow". Neither is a primary source.

The early Scottish record

After 1502 the evidence comes in small, dated pieces. Most of the items below are from the National Library of Scotland's account of early Scottish golf.

Two stories the record does not support

Mary, Queen of Scots is often said to have played golf at Seton Palace in 1567, shortly after the murder of Lord Darnley. The story is that her enemies accused her of it, but NLS says there is no solid evidence for it.

The so-called first golf international, Scotland against England on Leith Links in 1681, is another. NLS reports it only as a tradition: the Duke of York is said to have partnered a shoemaker, John Paterson, whose share of the winnings helped him buy a house in the Canongate. Wikipedia also describes the contest as unconfirmed.

The oldest course

Golf Magic reports that Guinness World Records certified the Old Course at Musselburgh Links as the world's oldest golf course, on the strength of the 1672 Foulis entry. The date of that certification is unclear: a Today's Golfer report sits at a March 2009 web address, while the Golf Magic page carries an update date of 1 November 2023. The 2009 date is the better supported of the two. Musselburgh began with seven holes, grew to nine through additions in 1838 and 1870, and hosted The Open six times between 1874 and 1889.

The title is not uncontested. An Edinburgh Evening News article, which we could see only in a search summary, says Musselburgh is no longer thought to be the oldest course and that the Old Course at St Andrews holds the title. Wikipedia notes that Musselburgh's claim rests on the 1672 record together with the unconfirmed Mary, Queen of Scots story.

The Dutch claim: colf and kolf

One rival to a purely Scottish origin is the Dutch club-and-ball game colf, later kolf. The evidence for it, as the sources describe it:

• Wikipedia gives about 1261 for the earliest known Dutch mention of the game, in Jacob van Maerlant's Boeck Merlijn.
• Wikipedia says the Brussels council banned colf in 1360, that Albrecht of Bavaria gave Haarlem a field called De Baen in 1389 for games including colf, and that colf players were barred in 1456 from playing in and around the church at Naarden.
• Hendrick Avercamp painted Kolf Players on Ice in 1625. Wikipedia counts about 200 kolf courses in Amsterdam by 1769 and 350 in the Netherlands by 1792, and says the game declined in the late 19th century.

The link between colf and Scottish golf is where it gets contested. According to a search summary of Britannica, the Dutch historian Steven J.H. van Hengel regarded colf as the earliest form of golf. A search summary of a New Netherland Institute page says his 1972 research caused controversy by arguing for a strong link, and that the word golf may come from the Dutch "kolf" or "kolve", meaning club. Wikipedia's kolf article says Scots merchants trading in the Low Countries carried the game home, where it adapted to the coastal links; that remains an unproven claim.

One much-repeated date is disputed outright. Wikipedia's Loenen entry repeats van Hengel's account of colf played near Kronenburg castle in 1297, with the castle door as the target. Britannica, per a search summary, calls an annual Loenen match from 1297 an anachronism without supporting evidence, and a Dutch golf-history note on golfgeschiedenis.nl concludes that neither the date nor the place is supported by facts.

The Chinese claim: chuiwan

In 1991 Professor Ling Hongling argued, in the Australian Society for Sports History Bulletin, that golf derived from chuiwan, a Chinese stick-and-ball game, according to Wikipedia. Sports Illustrated reported in January 2006 that Ling, of Lanzhou University, dated a form of the game in China to AD 945, citing the Song-dynasty Dongxuan Records, and suggested Mongol traders later carried it to Europe. The St Andrews Links Trust dismissed the theory in the same report, saying golf as known today was first played at St Andrews. Wikipedia's chuiwan article is flagged as relying largely on one source, and Wikipedia describes the theory as a minority claim.

Other claimed ancestors

• Britannica, according to a search summary, notes that some historians trace golf to the Roman game paganica, and that the game of chicane closely resembled kolf.
• Wikipedia says a Bruges manuscript of the late 13th century shows a club-and-ball game, and that the Flemish "Golf Book" of hours illustrated by Simon Bening, from around 1540, shows a golf-like game.
• The Scotsman reported one memorabilia dealer's argument that the "golf" James II banned was a form of crosse, and that the French played something like modern golf in the Loire Valley at the same time. This is a single source's claim.

One popular story can be dismissed: Wikipedia calls the idea that GOLF stands for "Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden" a false etymology.

How golf left Scotland

Clubs also appeared beyond Scotland. According to Wikipedia, Royal Calcutta Golf Club in India dates from 1829 and is generally listed as the oldest club outside the UK. Scottish Golf History says British residents founded Pau Golf Club in south-west France in 1856 with nine holes, and Wikipedia describes Pau as the oldest club in continental Europe. In England, Wikipedia records Westward Ho! (Royal North Devon) in 1864 as the first new English club since Blackheath, and counts 12 English courses in 1880 and more than 1,000 by 1914. Royal Montreal, founded in 1873, calls itself the oldest club in continuous existence in North America, according to Wikipedia. The story in the United States is told on the golf in America page, and the first Scottish clubs on the St Andrews and the R&A page.