Origins of Golf

[Dave_Miller]

In the June 24 th issue of Sports Illustrated under The Blotter in the Scorecard Section was an interesting proposition that Golf Origninated in the Netherlands and not in Scotland.

The article stated:
"Proposed By sports historian Heiner Gillmeister of Germany''s
Bonn University, that golf originated in the Netherlands, not in Scotland.  Gillmeister whose thesis appears in The International Journal of the History of Sport, says that long-cited evidence that golf began in Scotland int he 15th century - including government documents that refer to people playing "gauf" - in fact refers to a form of hockey.  Gillmeister has found golf rules in a 16th - century Dutch document and cites an 18th - century Dutch painting of a man hitting a ball with a stick as the earliest known visual representation of golf."

Does anyone have any additional information on this?  Is Gillmeister's theory correct or have any actual basis concerning the origins of the game?  What is the evidence that traces the game to 15th - century Scotland?

Anyone know anymore?

Cheers,
Dave  

[Bob_Huntley]

Those blasted Dutch, before you know it they will have claimed to have invented D. Boy Paints.

Kolf or kolven was played on ice, there were no holes in the ground but posts or doors et.,, similarity exists between the games but it was NOT golf.

[Dave_Miller]

Bob:

What is the source of your information?  Does this challenge what Gillmeister is saying in his thesis.  

I had never before heard anything about the Netherlands being the origins of golf.  I think the premise is interesting but is there any truth to it?

Cheers,

Dave

[Paul Turner]

Dave

I'm not sure that the thesis is stating anything new?  The kolven/dutch link has been known for ages.  There are also some claims from the Chinese too!

[blangford]

The seed may have come from elsewhere, as it is widely believed, but the tree grew in Scotland.

[Justin_Zook]

The game that we play was first played in Scotland.  This is fact and I am sure glad that this is so because I love Scotland!!!  Anyway, the game that Bob Huntley referred to sounds more like lacrosse or ice hockey than it does golf.  It seems that the distinction between the modern form of the game and the games that golf evolved from is skewed.  Kolven or Kolf seems to resemble ice hockey more than it does golf.  If the Scots way back in the day, tried playing kolf on the pastures at St Andrews, their balls would eventually get plugged in the rabbit nests.  After a while, they probably started playing an altered game to see who could land their ball in a nest in the fewest amount of strokes.  That's my theory on how the game was started, but I certainly would not imply that a game like kolf or kolven is the earliest form of golf.  Golf I feel is the result of a bunch of Scotsmen who grew tired of their modified kolven game, and invented their own game GOLF!!!!!

[Charles_P.]

Here's what C. B. wrote in 1928:

"Despite the early and continuous enthusiasm with which the game was played in Scotland, many chroniclers have tried to prove that golf originated on the Continent.  There is not the slightest scintilla of evidence to support this.  Numberless games with club and ball have been played for the past two thousand years, and doubless for millenniums before; but no game with more than one club and with a separate ball for each plyer, and no game having as its goal a designated hole in the ground.  Caesar came as close as any to modern golf when he played Paganica to a mark-- but not to a small hole in the ground -- with one club and the sort of leather ball stuffed with feathers which Scotchmen used before the discovery of the gutta percha.

"There are many other Continental rivals to golf.  There is even a resemblance of name in the German word Kolbe and the Dutch word Kolf, each signifying 'club.'  And Dutch pictures and tiles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries show men playing a game which has a superficial resemblance to the Scotch sport so far as the club goes.  Actually it resembles golf in no other particular.  It is nearly always pictured as a winter game on the ice, with the goal as a post.  Later kolf came indoors and was played in a rectangular space sixty by twenty-five feet with a floor as hard and level as a billiard table enclosed by walls two feet high, from wich the ball could be made to rebound accurately against posts placed near either end.  The French game of jeu de mail comes closer to golf, being played cross-country, with a kind of croquet mallet and to posts or raised marks.

"Why so many historians of the the game have so persistently interpreted kolf as golf I fail to comprehend.  As Andrew Lang says in 'Badminton': 'Clearly golf is no more kolf than cricket is poker.'  The only explanations I can see lies in the facility with which  Dutch painters turned out pictures of their countrymen playing with kolf club and ball.  In the golf collection which I purchased from Doctor W. Laidlaw Purves, a noted Scotch golfer who founded the Royal St. George's Golf Club of Sandwich, there are some twenty pictures of Dutch kolf scenes from paintings and many Delft tiles including one from which the little figures used as insignia of the National Golf Links of America and the Links Golf Club near New York were taken.  All of these Doctor Purves collected during some years of residence in Holland, but not one represents a true golfing scene.  Yet they can and do lead astray the golf enthusiast who seeks some concrete evidence of the origin of his favorite sport."

-Charles Blair Macdonald, "Scotland's Gift: Golf," pp.8-12.

This is on old debate that resurfaces from time-to-time.  In "To the Linksland," Michael Bamberger briefly discusses this issue with a historian who points out that many variants of games with clubs and balls have existed, but the Scottish version is the only one played to a hole in the ground -- one of golf's defining characteristics.

[Bob_Huntley]

Charles P.

Thanks, I wished I had said that.

[Dave_Miller]

Wouldn't Gillmeister have included C.B. in his research.  It seems unlikely if he is a noted historian that he would have ignored the writings of MacDonald.  

It appears Gillmeister has used the same paintings, or similar paintings, that MacDonald used in reaching his conlclusions. Yet his conclusions are significantly different than MacDonalds'.  

Gillmeister also refers to a draft of rules from the 16th-century.  I wonder if this draft refers to a hole in the ground, separate ball for each participant, etc.

It a shame SI didn't give more info.

Cheers,

Dave

[Charles_P.]

Here is the abstract for Heiner Gillmeister's article in the current issue of "History of Sport," entitled "Golf on the Rhine: On the Origins of Golf, with Sidelights on Polo":

"The claim of a Scottish origin of golf has always rested on two pillars, if the Acts of Parliament of Scotland from the regins of James II and James IV may so be called.  In the first, a resolution of the fouteenth parliament convened in Edinburgh on 6 March 1457, the games of football and golf ('futbawe and ye golf') were banned with a vengence ('utterly cryt done').  In the second, a resolution passed in 1491, football, golf and other useless games were outlawed altogether ('fut bawis gouff or uthir sic unproffitable sports'). In addition, both texts enjoin the Scottish people to practice archery, a sport which, it is claimed, might be put to good use in defending the country.  In existing golf 'histories', the above-mentioned pillars can also be said to have defined, not unlike the Pillars of Hercules of yore, the limits of navigation for the Anglo-Saxon golf historian.  This article aims to show that the claim of a Scots origin based on these acts is unsubstantiated and to bring new source material which again proves the continental origin of Scotland's national game to the attention of golf historians.  At the same time, the time-honoured view that polo may have been influential in the genesis of golf will be reviewed and it will be shown that, although there is no basis for such an assumption, polo tips the scales in favour of a continental origin of golf."

Ultimately, I think this debate is akin to those who claim that the plays we attribute to William Shakespeare were authored by another individual (or several).  It always generates a little buzz, but is ultimately impossible to substantiate.

For what it's worth, Heiner Gillmeister's last book was a history of tennis -- so I have to question his judgment entirely!

[Roger]

Many believe that golf originated in the Netherlands. Here is an article from North Berwick's website.

History of Golf
at North Berwick
By Douglas Seaton
Local Correspondent
The origins of golf are open to speculation but most historians subscribe to the theory that the game originated in the Netherlands. Ket Kolven played on ice in the Low Countries over 500 years ago,used an implement to hit the ball known as a kolf, a word derived from the German Kolbe which simply means club.

It was documented in 1373 that a match similar to the Dutch game was played in Scotland, across-country with teams of four. Using a wooden ball, the target was the door of a selected building on the route.

There were strong trading ties between the Scots and the peoples of the Low Countries and many harbours on the Firth of Forth were used for this trade. The Dutch connection can also be traced back to the Battle of Hastings in 1066, when following William the Conqueror's victory, his flemish nobles were rewarded with land in England. Later many of these families including the Wemyss and Seton's acquired land in Scotland and brought their games and sports with them.

The Wemyss family, one of the oldest in Flanders were rewarded with land at Stanway in Gloucestershire before moving first to Methil in Fife and then in 1769 to Gosford in East Lothian where James V played golf.

Sir Henry Seton was rewarded with land in Bedfordshire before moving to South Cockenzie in East Lothian, where his son George, 5th Lord Seton built Seton Palace, site of the famous game of golf in 1657, played by Mary Queen of Scots. Gosford House and the former site of Seton Palace are within a few miles of North Berwick.

Locally, the Dalrymple family have had a long association with first archery, then golf. David Dalrymple an advocate in Edinburgh, who as Lord Westhill was Lord of Session, and captain of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers.

Sir Hew Drummore, second son of the 1st Baronet of North Berwick became a member of the Royal Company of Archers in 1710, and was also captain of the Honourable Company.

Golf was first played in North Berwick during the 17th century on the Burgh Common or East Links. By the 1790s, the golfers had moved from the Common and were playing their sport on the West Park or West Links. There are four Golf Clubs playing the West Links, a practice unique to many Scottish courses. The East Course at North Berwick was originally nine-holes before being extended to 18 holes in 1907 and is played by the Glen Golf Club and Rhodes Golf Club.

[Ed_Baker]

Davey3,

The modern origin of golf was on your practice putting green in your back yard at 1:00 am Sunday morning, because it certainly expunged any semblance of the traditional game of golf and any of the putting skills that any of the participants may have had for Sundays tournament round!

I 5 putted the 5th for a smooth 8 net 7 in Sundays medal round and IT'S YOUR FAULT!!!

Sank U Bevy Mush

[Ed_Baker]

Davey3,

The modern origin of golf was on your practice putting green in your back yard at 1:00 am Sunday morning, because it certainly expunged any semblance of the traditional game of golf and any of the putting skills that any of the participants may have had for Sundays tournament round!

I 5 putted the 5th for a smooth 8 net 7 in Sundays medal round and IT'S YOUR FAULT!!!

Sank U Bevy Mush

[Dave_Miller]

Bakey4:

If I had known Coogie would be in his pocket on five I would have ensured the green speed in the back yard was much quicker to ready you for the challenge of five on Sunday AM.

However I think the 42 Lite Beers and the three hours you and Flynnie spent before getting to my house may have had something to do with this.

Sometimes being beaten-beaten ain't all bad.

Cheers,
Davey3

[Justin_Zook]

Sounds like Charles P. has read St. Andrews Golf Links: The First 600 Years!

[Dave_Miller]

Does anyone know what the golf rules in the 16th Century document, to which Gillmeister refers, say.  

I'm curious if there is some strong relationship to the later game.

Some say Kolven was ice hockey and some say gauf was ice hockey.  

Cheers,
Dave

[Charles_P.]

Dave-

If I were you, I wouldn't expend too much energy on the debate.  It all comes down to semantics: if the presence of a club and ball constitutes "golf," the nod probably goes to the Dutch; if the hole differentiates golf from other similar games, the nod goes to the Scots.  Anyway, I don't know what the 16th century Dutch "golf" rules say.

That said, here's a few more interesting links for you (the second one speaks directly to the matter at hand):

http://www.golfeurope.com/almanac/history/history1.htm

http://www.origins.net/ScotsLife/golf.html