Golf

I thought I'd do an article on golf. This morning on the radio they said that they were launching a program in schools to teach kids about golf. Indeed, it is a sport that requires to be calm and focused and it is perfect to calm these little darlings; o) Indeed, precision, endurance, technicality and concentration are essential qualities to practice this sport.

Apart from the mini-golf, I have never practiced this sport but I would like to try one day, it must be nice to be on a quiet and green with the song of birds that encourage us to put the ball in the hole.

(Picture source)

Golf is a sport of precision playing outdoors, which involves sending a ball into a hole with the help of clubs. The goal of the game is to perform, on a defined course, the least possible shots.

Golf did not take off until the second half of the 19th century with the arrival of professionalism and private clubs in Scotland and then in England, where the first professionally run British Open was set up in 1860.

Golf events were contested during the Olympic Games in Paris 1900 and again in 1904 in Saint-Louis, the sport disappears from the program for 112 years. Golf is back in 2016 at the Rio Olympics.

After the Second World War, golf saw the arrival of other nations such as South Africa, Germany, Spain, South Korea, Japan or Australia and became global at the end of Twentieth century. There are approximately 85 million regular practitioners.

History

There have been games of balls and sticks since ancient times. Under the Roman Empire, a game consisted of sending a leather ball to a specific goal.

Later in England, the Cambuca game consisted of hitting a wooden ball with a cane and referring to the Roman game. In the Middle Ages, many games across Europe coexist where you hit a ball to poles or iron rings or another game where you hit a ball with a cane.

The real origin of modern golf comes from Holland. In 1297, in Loenen aan de Vecht, during a commemoration, a game is practiced called colf where one had to strike a ball and send it towards a specific goal. A few years later, as early as 1360 the authorities of Brussels are fining the people practicing this game, indeed, since there is no course yet, people play there regardless of the place.

The first mention of the course and the fairway (the tee, small support of wood or plastic on which the ball is placed and the green, grassed surface and closely mowed on which is the hole, are connected by a stretch of grass well maintained called the fairway) intervenes in 1483 in the Netherlands with mowing grass in meadows.

Until the seventeenth century, the game has a growing success in Holland before disappearing suddenly due to the development of indoor games and society.

It is in Scotland that the golf we are currently experiencing appears. Due to the commercial flows that flourished in the North Sea during the Middle Ages and the post modern period, the golf is imported by Dutch sailors to Scotland with the necessary equipment.

However, golf is only established on the east coast of Scotland and has long been confined to this side.

(Picture source)

Gradually, golf, originally practiced by the Freemasons, began its expansion with the first manufacturer of clubs in Saint Andrews in 1627 and various courses, such as Bruntsfield, considered the first real golf course in Scotland .

The first course of Saint Andrews has 22 holes before being cut down for the construction of houses to have only 18 holes in total. In 1744, the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers drafted a dozen rules of the game, but it was ten years later that the first official rules were developed by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, which made a total of thirteen rules that have not changed since.

In the early 1770s, a first African golf course was built on Bunce Island in Sierra Leone by English slave traders17.

Course

Golf is played on a course that has 18 holes but it can also include only 9 or less. On a course of 9 holes, it is sometimes necessary to make 9 holes in one direction and then to make the same 9 holes in the other direction.

The European Golf Association authorizes competitions on 9 holes but leaves it to the national federations to fix the modalities. There are also initiatory mini-courses called Pitch and Putt. The major difference is in the length of the holes, which is much smaller than that of a standard 18-hole course.

According to its location and the architect who designed it, a course can present tree parts, bushes or shrubs but also water bodies that are called water hazards, delimited by yellow stakes.

Placed in strategic places to make the ground attractive, sand, called bunkers can spice up the game.

Each hole has four areas : the fairway or alley, where the grass is mown short, the green or green around the hole, where the grass is very short, a few millimeters, the pre-rough, where the grass is more high than on the driveway and the rough, where the grass is higher than on the pre-rough.

(Picture source)

A fairway can have different forms to make the player's life a bit more difficult. The most obvious is a narrow and elongated shape, up to about 10 meters. The difficulty is of course for the player to shoot straight and therefore not to see his ball arrive in the rough or be declared lost. Another form is the dogleg, to the right or to the left, terrain forming an elbow with a more or less pronounced angle. The course architects try to use many artifices to deceive the player and mislead him or make his life more difficult: false perspectives, false slopes, mounds, misplaced trees, ...

On each course, there is one by which is the standard number of moves set to finish the game.
Usually, on a course of 18 holes, the par is 72. This average is calculated according to the par of each hole.
The par also refers to the number of hits that must be made on each hole.

(Text source)

(Text source)