“ You little son of a b*tch ball! Why don’t you just go HOME? That’s your HOME! Are you too good for your HOME?” — Happy Gilmore.
August is here. That means the St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital’s 72-hole Golf challenge has official began. Well, it actually began 15 days ago, but who is counting? I took this challenge because I love to golf, and because the hospital does some wonderful things for the children, and the parents. The best thing about the hospital is they never charge! Yeah, you read that right, families of a child who receives treatment will not be billed. Not only do they treat every child for free, but they also give their parents food and housing during the treatment. That way, the family can focus on their child! When I read all that they do for the families, I knew I wanted to support them, so that’s why I joined the cause. There are two parts to the challenge. The first part of the challenge is to raise $200, which I am struggling to do, so please help here. The second part of this challenge is to play 72 holes of Golf, which is also hard because of staffing issues (at work), but I’m not giving up! I will complete this challenge, even if the golf community is toxic, at times. Here is why I think that; When you first start the challenge, you are prompted to join their Facebook group. This group is full of other golfers that are also taking the challenge. The purpose of this group is to unite other participants. I thought everything was going great until someone posted something about their clubs.
Please remember that golf can be a VERY expensive hobby, but that doesn’t mean you need to spend all of that money on new clubs, shoes, bags, or gloves, It is simply just not needed. Anyway, this man posted a status about his clubs and got torn apart by a few men in the challenge. There was a comment that stuck with me and gave me the inspiration to do this whole series. The comment was this, “You can’t golf if you want to avoid spending money. If you want to avoid spending money, then stay away.” My brain was blown away by the ignorance of this man! Here is the truth: You can play golf without spending a ton of money! That is what this series will try to prove at the end. My goal was to set a certain spending limit and tried to keep it within that budget. This series will give you a brief history lesson in part 1, part 2 will teach you the basics of golf, then the third part will show you if I stayed within my budget. Also, what I bought with the certain amount of money given. Finally, the last day of this month, we will draw for the winner of the Impromtdude Golf Merch! Remember, If you want to enter to win, all you have to do is like my posts! 1 like = 1 entrée. You can like all 700 if you’d like, and that will give you 700 entrées! I am excited to get this series started!!! Today, we will be learning about the history of golf. Like the grilling series, let us first start off with a very short golfing story!
“I live down town in a big city. When I walk outside, all I see are parking lots. This really is a bummer when you want to practice your swing during the day. I always had to wait for all the workers to leave, so I could hit my balls. This got really old quick, so I decided to rig up a golf net in my basement. This rigged golf net was a blanket that was nailed to a wall that wasn’t against the main wall, pretty much there was a small indent in the wall that acted as a net for my golf balls. I am not certain why I decided to use a real golf ball, when I had the foam ones, but I did. I would spend a lot of my spare time in the basement during this time. This was about to change, and I didn’t even know. During one of my practice sessions, I noticed that I was slicing a bit, so I went downstairs to work on my swing. I hit a few balls to warm up, but when I went to give a full swing, I guess I fully hooked the ball into the wall, and it ricocheted into my left eye socket. The impact of the ball knocked me out. I laid on the cold, hard basement floor. I knew I hit myself the second I came back into reality. Not only that, but I wanted to avoid grabbing my eye at first, because I feared what the outcome could have been! Finally, I grabbed my eye and felt something warm flowing from it! I was bleeding heavily from the outer part of my eye. I made my hand into a cuff and walked upstairs. At first, Airs thought it was fake, but her brother shortly confirmed that I was telling the truth. At that point, she got up and helped me get it cleaned up. This is when I realized I couldn’t see anything out of my left eye. This lasted for a few weeks, but eventually went away! And I never golfed in my basement again.”
I learned my lesson that day. I learned that I shouldn’t golf in a brick basement with real golf balls and clubs. I almost lost my eye that day. If the ball had been a bit lower, we would be seeing Impromtdude with an eye patch! But none of this would be possible unless Golf was invented!! When was gold invented, who invented it? Let’s talk about that!
Golf has been around for centuries, but historians have had a problem trying to date back to when this wonderful game actually began. There are many possibilities of where it started and who was the mastermind behind it because there have been many games that resembled golf. Many cultures have had a game that revolved around hitting a small ball with a stick, such as Kolven, Chole, and Pall mall and many and many others. That is why historians have said that the Stained glass in the Gloucester Cathedral in England is most likely not a golfer, though it does resemble a modern-day golfer, but is probably one of the many variants of the game. There were even speculations that China had a game that was very close to how golf is played today, before anyone else, but there was never proof enough for them to take the cake. So, who was the first place to have golf, who is the home of golf? Well, that crown, that very special crown is given to St. Andrews of Scotland! In the 12th century, there were many golfers playing along the West Sands, sand dunes, along the coast of St. Andrews. This fact was never sustained, so can we really count it? If you don’t believe so, then we will move along to the first printed evidence for the game we call Golf. This evidence comes from a printed article back in 1457. The document that spoke about the game was a decree by James II, of Scotland, for football and golf to be belittled and not used. James II feared an attack from England, and felt the people were caring far too much about hitting a ball than they were practicing archery. As he said, “A sweet struck iron was unlikely to repel the English, whereas a straight arrow might.” Though, James II had a point, have you ever had a golf ball hit you in the face? I think they are both very effective methods to fend off enemies! People were then sent back to practice archery, which probably added so many strokes to their 72….how sad.
Let’s jump ahead.
In 1513, James IV married the daughter of Henry VII of England. During this time, James IV sent his servants out to have some clubs made. The man who would make the first official set of clubs was an Artisan of Perth. These clubs were sent back to James IV, and he used them to play a man by the name of Earl of Boswell. It was at this time in history that golf would be formerly known as a Royal game.
In 1603,
golf began to spread through parts of the United Kingdom. The credit was to be given to James I because he would go on to make sure that as long as there was due religious observance, anyone could enjoy a nice day of sports on Sundays. James IV would pass his love of Golf down to his 3 sons; Charles I, Charles II, and James II. They were all avid golfers and loved to play as much as they could. Here is a fun little fact for you; Charles I was actually in the middle of a game at a Leith, one of the first courses in Scotland, when news of the Ireland rebellion was brought to everyone’s attention. I wonder if he finished his match? Do you think so?
Now, we have talked much about who started this game, but how did the actual first game look? We know how today’s game is played. We are given a number of strokes, usually 72, and we try to get under that number of strokes, but this wasn’t the case back in the day. They actually didn’t even have scorecards to keep track of their score. Golfers would play match play. This is where you go head-to-head against another player. The person that knocks in the ball in the fewest attempts wins that hole. The player with the most holes won, at the end, wins the match. Wagers were placed before the match, of course the winner won whatever they wagered. There were no formal rules or ground keep. If you were to play golf, you would be playing on common land that was owned by the whole community. There were special cases that you would play on private lands, but that wasn’t often the case… The courses were sometimes rough to play on. Putting was tricky as the greens were not finely cut, like they are these days, this was because there were no lawnmowers. The greens were bumpy due to that fact. Like golfers need any more heartaches when putting, right?
Up to 1743, There were no clubs for golfers to join or go to. This would change in 1744, though, with the birth of the Honourable company of Edinburgh Golfers, which was a group of men that played a 5-hole course in Leith together. Leith is now a part of the district of Edinburgh. This club was first based in Leith, on the east coast of Scotland. Before I tell you the average size of their hole, let me first tell you the average size of a golf course hole today. At Pebble Beach, one of the most famous courses in the world, the shortest hole is 155 yards, whereas their longest hole is 599 yards. Now that you know what to expect, the first hole recorded at Leith was over 400 yards. You are probably thinking “Well that isn’t so bad, that is actually normal.” What you’re not factoring in is how much we have adapted with our equipment. Back in the day, they used wooden clubs that didn’t drive the ball nearly as far. Their course might have been 400 yards, but that is equivalent to 600 yards today, based on what they were using as clubs. The club would pick up and move to Musselburgh in 1836, then again to Muirfield in 1891. During this span of time, the club would have moved a total of 20 miles. The club only allowed men to join their group, but voted to accept ladies in 2017!
The earlier days of golf were different depending on which course you went to. Today, most courses either have 9-holes or 18-holes. This wasn’t the case in the beginning. Each course was allowed to pick how big their course was, and the number of holes were all over the place. St. Andrews had 22 holes, Prestwick of Scotland had 12, Leith only had 5, Perth of Scotland had 6, and Montrose, the biggest of them all, had 25!
St. Andrews had 22 holes until 1764 when William St. Clair of Roslin, captain of the leith and St. Andrews golf clubs, pushed for the first 4 holes of St. Andrews to be restructured into 1. St. Andrews would now be the first course to have 18 holes, and would then become the new standard for courses moving forward.
To be continued…. Part 2 coming at 4 P.M. Central time.
Impromt Dude 