Yardage Questions

[Adam_F_Collins]

Do we know when yardage itself came to be a part of the game?

Was it always there from the beginning?

We know that the yardage marker is a relatively recent development, and that the players of old were much more 'feel' players, but was there ever a point when the whole game was played by feel?

Was there a time when there was no attention paid to yardage at all?

[TEPaul]

First calculating the yardages of golf shots is commonly attributed to Gene Andrews of California maybe starting in the 1950s. It's also said that Nicklaus picked up the use of yardage on all shots from Andrews.

I do remember the day when most good players mostly played by feel in a way. But I also found something I posted on here one time about a way of using yardages during that transition time between basically feel play and the common use of yardage marking on courses that came later.

My Dad was a pretty good national amateur playing in lots of national tournaments through the 1950s and 1960s. In those early days obviously hardly any courses had yardage markings as they do now.

When my Dad died about 12 years ago and I was cleaning out his house I found a couple of big boxes in the attic that contained probably hundreds of little flip notebooks that he made himself of the yardages of all the courses he played competitons on.

All hand drawings and notations like such and such a yardage from this or that tree and so on.