The first, the Women’s Professional Golf Association (WPGA), was chartered in 1944. The first known reference to golf balls being stuffed with feathers. It was a solid ball, made by softening strips of gutta percha, (dried sap of a Sapodilla tree) in boiling water and then moulding the ball by hand before placing it in cold water to harden. Seen from this perspective, golf would be the result of the process of civilization as described in the work of German-born sociologist Norbert Elias. Golf's status and popularity quickly spread throughout the 16th century due to it's royal endorsement. Hilton. In the mid-1840s it was discovered to be a substance ideal for the easy and efficient manufacture of golf balls; the manufacturing process consisted simply of boiling a strip of gutta-percha, molding it into a spherical shape, and allowing it to dry. King James VI ascends to the English throne and his court begins playing golf at Blackheath in London. The members played on Fletcher’s Fields in the city’s central area until urban growth compelled a move of some miles to Dixie, a name derived from a group of Southern refugees who arrived there after the U.S. Civil War. Mary Queen of Scots reportedly plays golf just days after the murder of her husband Lord Darnley. The stainless-steel club heads of the 1980s gave way to titanium (a lightweight, extremely hard metal) heads in the 1990s. The first prototypes were smooth as billiard balls; they were difficult to get airborne and tended to duck (drop) quickly in flight. He proved his ability as a golfer by winning the U.S. Amateur tournaments would be supplanted by the PGA Championship and the Masters.) Its progenitor was John Reid, a Scot from Dunfermline who became known as “the father of American golf.” Reid, on learning that fellow Scot Robert Lockhart was returning to the old country on business, asked him to bring back some golf clubs and balls. India has the oldest club outside Great Britain; the Royal Calcutta Golf Club was founded in 1829, and the Royal Bombay Golf Club came about 12 years later. Leith was also the scene of the first international golf match in 1682 when the Duke of York and George Patterson playing for Scotland beat two English noblemen. The first Scotland-England amateur match was organized in 1902, and it was at Hoylake in 1921 that an unofficial contest between British and U.S. players, a curtain-raiser to the Amateur Championship, was played and served as the genesis of the Walker Cup series. Their hope, however, was badly disappointed, and the offer of support was so meagre that Prestwick decided to go it alone and spent 30 guineas on the ornamental challenge belt to be awarded to the champion. Standout players soon emerged, including Patty Berg, Louise Suggs, Betty Jameson, and, especially, the multisport legend Mildred (“Babe”) Didrikson Zaharias. The five charter members of the newly formed the USGA were the St. Andrew’s Golf Club of Yonkers, N.Y., Newport (R.I.) Golf Club, Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, N.Y., The Country Club in Brookline, Mass., and Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton, Ill. One relates that it was played annually in the village of Loenen, Netherlands, beginning in 1297, to commemorate the capture of the killer of Floris V, count of Holland and Zeeland, a year earlier. In the meantime, golf was played experimentally at many places in the United States without taking permanent root until, in 1885, it was played in Foxburg, Pennsylvania. (It should be noted that when Bobby Jones won a Grand Slam during the 1930 season, the four tournaments that constituted the Grand Slam were different; the British Amateur and U.S. In the late 1930s the professional circuit, underwritten by civic and club organizations throughout the country, began putting up major prize money for the experts. The French golf federation, the Union des Golfs de France, was inaugurated in 1912. The contemporary account of the queen’s misconduct also makes it clear that at the time a golf club was still called a golf in Scotland. However, a Dutch origin of tee is still plausible, as a variation of the Flemish tese, meaning “target” (as in curling); the word originally referred to the hole but eventually came to mean a “pile of sand taken from the hole.” There are also good reasons to posit a Dutch origin for the words putt (from putten, “put into a hole”) and bunker (a possible back-formation of bancaert kolve). Nevertheless, ball makers have great flexibility in terms of materials used, dimple patterns, and size and weight (providing this design conforms to the standards of size and weight) and are free to design any ball that takes advantage of such leeway. In the 15. The event was staged at the Old Course in St Andrews and Australia defeated the USA in a play-off. This ban was repeated in 1471 when Parliament thought it “expedient [th]at…ye futbal and golf be abusit.” In a resolution passed in 1491, football, golf, and other useless games were outlawed altogether (“fut bawis gouff or uthir sic unproffitable sports”). By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. The restored manor house and golf course at the Headfort estate in County Meath, Leinster, Ire. By 2000 the PGA was offering more than $135,000,000 in prizes annually. In the absence of a prize, there was no championship in 1871; but the next year a cup, which has been in competition ever since, was put up. Proof that golf in Scotland had exactly the same meaning as its Flemish counterpart kolve comes in The Buik of Alexander the Conqueror, a translation, by Sir Gilbert Hay (c. 1460), of the medieval Roman d’Alexandre. The play of such outstanding golfers as Kathy Whitworth, Mickey Wright, Carol Mann, Sandra Haynie, and Sandra Palmer helped maintain a reasonable level of popularity for the LPGA throughout the 1960s. A continental origin of golf is also suggested by a linguistic analysis of golfing terms and a recently discovered Dutch description of golf from the first half of the 16th century.