"“It is quite certain that, had the ground on which ordinary inland golf is played today been the only available ground for the purpose, the game would never have been invented at all.”
Garden G. Smith, The World of Golf, 1898
Again, a most fascinating question. I love this type of speculation because it gets not just into the entire evolution of golf but into attempting to understand it's very beginnings. As such, I for one, would prefer to take this question out of just the question of soil conditions and sandy soil and look at Garden Smith's remark as a question;
"Would golf have been invented at all?"
I think it's important to note that Garden Smith did not say the game COULD not have been invented elsewhere as it's come to us from the very earliest Scottish linksland, he said only it WOULD not have been invented (as it's come to us) if the only available ground was somewhere other than the Scottish linksland.
And I for one, very much subscribe to the theory of such as Garden Smith, C. B. Macdonald, and particulaly a current writer by the name of Malcolm Campbell, who in his recent book "The Scottish Golf Book" does track the beginnings of the game of golf itself.
(Brian Phillip's gave me this book for Xmas of 2002 and I've been a rude pig to not have thanked him before this but he has been a dumb pig for having the wrong email address on Golfclubatlas until recently. But now his email address is correct, so I'll email him my everlasting thanks for this book and I also thank him publicly for it on here now! This is one beautifully written book on Scottish golf, it's evolution and a very logical section on what the game of golf's very beginnings may have been).
As to why some of the very early games in other countries can not be considered the forerunners of golf or early influences on it are most interesting and notable. Games such as the Dutch Kolven, Roman Pagancia, or the French jeu de mail, he feels, as does Macdonald and others, are not connected to golf in anyway as they were just too different. All of them were played with sticks and balls of one form or another but other than jeu de mail the ball itself was a common competition ball and not the single player ball that golf is and has been (other than foursome (Scottish alternate shot) of which there's no known similar arrangement, and never has been to a game like golf).
But Malcolm Campbell identifies the one single distinct difference between golf and other games that came before it or co-existed somewhere else with it and may have influenced it that proves to him (and me too) that golf as it began and evolved, and likely began in the Scotish linksland was thoroughly unique unto itself and not influenced by any other game.
That one distinct difference with other games remotely similar to it was the hole itself!! The hole--golf's destination and final target makes golf unique from anything remotely similar to it that could have come before it!
Those other games may have used sticks and balls and many players vying for that ball but those games, particularly Kolven on ice would more closely resemble hockey than golf. And even other stick and ball games used other forms of play and competition and also other things and other structures as targets, such as door or polls or sticks or whatnot. Clearly different than golf even if you don't consider that none of them other than jeu de mail were games where a single player retained his own ball. That's all differences enough for me and should be for all of us if attempting to identify and attribute any other game as the forerunner of golf or even an influence on it.
So then it seemingly began as wholly unique on the linksland of Scotland in a form very similar to the game we know today--remarkably similar really! And it's sort of mindboggling to realize that in that very similar form it was played on those linkslands for possibly four hundred years or more BEFORE even the very first vestiges of what we know now as golf architecture! That's twice as long or more than it is from the very beginnings of golf architecture as we know it to today!!
But what did the linksland itself have to do with golf as we know it and also golf architecture as we know it today exclusive of what golf might have been had it never been invented on the linkslands but had been invented elsewhere as Garden Smith's quotation alludes to?
Sandy soil clearly probably has a lot to do with it fundamentally but there're many other things that come to us today in the game of golf and most particularly its architecture that owe their existence to the Scottish linksland exclusively--many things.
What are all those other things that come to us today exclusively from the Scottish linksland?