The origins of the game of Golf, a sport played today all over the world and spread in Italy at the end of the 20th century, are uncertain.
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The origins of the game of Golf, a sport played today all over the world and spread in Italy at the end of the 20th century, are uncertain. It is even said that it was practiced in ancient Rome, where paganica was played with a leather ball swollen with well-compressed feathers and a cane.
A game similar to golf was played in China around the year 1000, drawings demonstrate a game called chuìwàn that was played with 10 clubs inlaid with jade and gold, which suggests that chuìwàn was a sport intended for wealthy people. Golf could therefore have been exported to Europe from China in the late Middle Ages by Mongolian travelers.
However, more popular is the theory that this game originated in Scotland in the late Middle Ages when two farmers threw a stone at each other with two sticks. In the 15th century, the first written testimony: the game of 'gowf' (from the Scottish 'goulf': to hit or slap) was mentioned in two Acts of the Scottish Parliament, which prohibited it because it distracted the subjects of King James II from their practice as archers.
Finally, it is also said that golf was born in 1200 in Holland, near the city of Loenen aan de Vecht, where players used a splint (in Dutch “kolf”) and a leather ball. The winner was the one who, hitting their own ball, reached a target several hundred meters away with the least number of shots.
But it is in Scotland that we have the first official document of modern golf and its rules are defined for the first time. Rules drawn up by the Gentlemen Golfers of Leith, the oldest golf club founded in 1744, and then revised by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in 1754 (the '13 rules of golf'). In 1744, the choice of the standard 18-hole course was also
chosen.The first golf course in the history of golf is the Royal Oldest Golf Club in Musselburgh (Scotland), where games were already taking place at the beginning of the 16th century.
Golf arrived in Italy in the 18th century through the English nobility who competed at Villa Doria Pamphili. In 1895 the first Golf Club was founded in Sorrento, followed by those of Varese (1897), Florence (1899) and Sanremo (1901)
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