Origins – Researchers that have discovered evidence of a Dutch game similar to golf that was played with a leather ball and a stick as early as 1297. The player to hit the ball into a target with the fewest strokes was the winner. However, the game is likely to have been around even earlier than that: A 1261 Dutch manuscript mentions a ball game played with a “colf,” or club,
The game appears to have caught on quickly. In 1387, a city in Holland made it illegal to play any type of game for money, with the exception of golf. Just two years later, a special field was set aside outside the city of Haarlem for the purpose of playing games, especially golf. A 1540 book that became known as the “Golf Book” described a game very similar to the modern golf game, and throughout the rest of the 1500s, references to “colf”/”kolf” appear in various works.
Dutch settlers in New York played the first game of golf in America in 1650. The settlers liked to play golf throughout the year; in the winter, they would play the game on ice.
– A Brief History of Golf: Both the Dutch and the Scots played a variation of golf hundreds of years ago.
– Golf Origins, Growth, and History: Kings initially outlawed golf, because they thought that playing golf took men away from military pursuits.