The origins of golf are unclear and much debated. However, it is generally accepted that modern golf developed in Scotland from the Middle Ages onwards. The game did not find international popularity until the late 19th century, when it spread into the rest of the United Kingdom and then to the British Empire and the United States.
The MacDonald boys playing golf by 18th-century portrait painter Jeremiah Davison
This scene in the margins of a late 13th-century manuscript depicts a game with clubs and a ball, possibly the game of kolf referred to by Jacob van Maerlant. It is considered to be the earliest known depiction of a golf-like game. (Bruges Public Library, Ms. 251 f. 149r)
The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews
Pub sign on the Golf Tavern on Bruntsfield Links, 2011
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit a ball into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible.
A golfer in the finishing position after hitting a tee shot
The Xuande Emperor of the Ming dynasty playing chuiwan
The MacDonald boys playing golf, attributed to William Mosman. 18th century, National Galleries of Scotland.
Aerial view of the Golfplatz Wittenbeck in Mecklenburg, Germany
