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A Passion For Golf

There is no dispute that golf, or a pastime similar to the game we know today, has been played for centuries, but exactly how and when this game of club-and-ball first arrived to test and frustrate the human soul remains a matter of speculation. Some trace golf's origins back to the game of paganica, played in the time of the Roman Empire, while others see it as evolving from the French jeu de mail or the Dutch game of kolven.

Whatever the truth of these speculations, the pioneers of golf were undoubtedly the Scots. It was the Scots who developed the game on their seaside links and transported it with them all over the world. Inspired by their passion for the game, they taught other nations to play. But just as importantly, they provided the first implements for golf and the courses to play on, and they laid down the standards and basic rules that still, to a large degree, prevail today.

Like so many other forms of human activity, golf has no clear recorded origins. With little solid evidence available, accounts of the early history of the game often depend heavily on the writer's imagination. Accepting that, as Voltaire sagely observed, the ancient histories are but fables that have been agreed upon, there are many mythological starting points from which to embark upon an account of the game.

The danger of fable is that it is too readily confused with fact. Quite simply, there is no documentary evidence of golf, as we know it today, prior to the middle of the fifteenth century, and there is no hard evidence to disprove the most obvious and well documented theory that the game began on the east coast of Scotland. But the quest to find earlier evidence of the game in its present form has taxed the minds of eminent men over many decades.

Most research has centered on establishing the relationship between golf and other pastimes in Europe, and seeking support for the theory that one or another of them was the forerunner of golf. There have been so many different types of club-and-ball games throughout the course of history that speculation knows almost no limit. Although the lack of solid facts frustrates attempts to reach a substantial conclusion, however, it is both illuminating and fascinating to compare other club-and-ball games with golf, consider any areas of overlap between them, and judge their possible influence on the game's development.

Some historians have gone back as far as Ancient Rome and forged a link between golf and paganica, a game that was popular with country folk in the early days of the Roman Empire. Little is known about the rules of the game, but legend has it that paganica was played with a bent stick and a ball made from leather filled with feathers. The interesting connection here is that early golf balls were also made with feathers stuffed into leather covers, although the paganica ball is believed to have been about 4-7in in diameter, so its resemblance to a golf "feathery" is not that close.

The expansion of the Roman Empire north and west from the Mediterranean could well have carried paganica across Europe. The legions who supported the Roman governors were recruited from the country districts, and it would have been natural for the occupying forces to have indulged their rural pastimes in foreign lands as they did at home.

This theory suggests that paganica was at the root of the later development of various other club-and-ball games in northern Europe, particularly in France and the Low Countries, which have also been proposed as the forerunners of golf. The principal candidates among them are cambuca, jeu de mail, chole, crosse, kolven, and pell mell. Cambuca (or cambuta) was played in England in the mid-fourteenth century during the reign of Edward III. There are close similarities with paganica: cambuca players used a curved club and a ball made from feathers which, it is thought, was propelled toward a mark set in the ground. In 1363 a royal proclamation was issued banning able-bodied men from all games on feast days. The list ranged from cockfighting to football and "other vain games," but also included cambuca and club ball, which was a form of hockey. Instead, the men were urged, on penalty of imprisonment, to

practice shooting with bow and arrow. Less than 100 years later, a Scottish Act of Parliament was to ban golf for the same reasons and threaten the same penalty of imprisonment for those caught playing it.

In the Great East Window of Gloucester Cathedral in the west of England, also dating from the mid-fourteenth century, a headless figure in stained glass is depicted swinging a curved club. The object of his attention is a yellow ball on a green background. Although the figure is known as the "golf player," it is more likely the game in question was cambuca, since the window is contemporary with the game and the ban that went with it.

Another game that appears to have owed much in its origins to the Roman game of paganica was the southern French sport of jeu de mail. The game was played with a mail (wooden mallet) and a wooden ball. The mallet was quite flexible, and the ball could be struck substantial distances.

The object of the game was to play the ball along a designated course about a half a mile long to a fixed point. Jeu de mail seems to have resembled golf in being an individual game, with each player retaining the use of his own ball throughout the game. The winner of jeu de mail was the player who required the least number of strokes to reach the designated mark, which is obviously not unlike the basic concept of scoring in golf. A game in most respects similar to the ancient form of jeu de mail was still being played at Montpellier in the south of France around the start of the twentieth century. In his Historical Gossip about Golf and Golfers, published in 1863, A. Robb offers an interesting account of jeu de mail, describing it as strikingly similar to the game of golf. "The club is made in the shape of a hammer," Robb writes. "The handle is rather longer than that of a golf club, of the same size and thickness, and having a good deal of spring in it." The mail club was even designed to cope with a bad lie: "One end of the club is nearly flat, like the flat end of a hammer, with which the ball is usually hit, while the other is more sloped, so as to give a facility for striking the ball when it gets into a position of difficulty. Both ends are strongly bound with iron, which is necessary to give weight to the club as well as prevent the wood from breaking." The ball was also not unlike a golf ball, being "solid and round, made of the root of the box tree, about two inches in diameter."

A later version of jeu de mail was chole, which dates back to the mid-fourteenth century in Belgium and France. Chole was played cross-country, using clubs with long wooden shafts and balls that were made of either beechwood or leather, stuffed with whatever material was readily available. The ball was teed up for the first stroke, and spare clubs and balls were probably carried around for the players.

The game itself was played in open fields with the object of reaching a fixed point, often some considerable distance away, and touching it with the ball in a specified number of strokes. However, unlike golf, there was only one ball, which all players, including opponents, played. Three members of the striking side each played strokes to advance the ball toward their objective. Then a member of the opposing team was allowed to strike the ball back from where it had come, or toward any hazard that would impair the progress of the striking team. This backward stroke was called a decholade, after which the striking team was allowed another three strokes. Crosse seems to have been simply another version of chole. The name for the game is derived from the French word for a hooked stick. It is known that the heads of the clubs were made of iron, similar to golf clubs, but like chole, the game seems actually to have had more resemblance to hockey than to golf.

Those who believe that the origins of golf are to be found in Holland present kolven (or kolf) as the basis of their case. Quite a lot is known about the game (in fact, it is still played in Friesland and north Holland), but its similarity to golf is limited.

Although occasionally played outside on ice, kolven is essentially an indoor game played on a wooden floor, or in kolf courts specifically built for the purpose. In The Statistical Account of Scotland in 1795, there is a graphic account of the Dutch game that reinforces the view that kolf and golf are separated by more than their initial letter.

In this account by the Rev. Walker, one of the ministers at the Canongate Church in Edinburgh, there is confirmation that kolven was played in a confined area of about 20 by 60ft and indoors. The reverend gentleman's recollection of the game comes from a period when he was resident in Holland and can therefore be assumed to be close to the mark. He writes: "The floor, which is composed of sand, clay, and pitch, is made as level as a billiard table, and the inclosing walls are, for 2ft above the floor, faced either with polished stone or sheet lead, that they may cause the ball to rebound with accuracy.

At about 8 to 10ft from each end wall, a circular post of about 5in diameter is placed precisely in the middle of the area with regard to breadth, consequently opposite the one to the other, at the distance of 40ft or thereby."

Neither the balls nor the clubs were close to their golf equivalents in design: "The balls used in the game are about the size of cricket balls [or baseballs], made perfectly round and elastic, covered with soft leather and sewed with fine wire. The clubs are from 3 to 4ft long, with stiff shafts. The heads are of brass, and the face, with which the ball is struck, is perfectly smooth, having no inclination, such as might have a tendency to raise the ball from the ground." The target in kolven was two posts: "The game may be played by any number, either in parties against each other, or each person for himself; and the contest is, who shall hit the two posts in the fewest strokes and make his ball retreat from the last one with such an accurate length as that it shall lie nearest to the opposite wall of the area."

It seems kolven bears only a limited resemblance to golf. It is more likely to have influenced hockey and, by its transfer onto frozen canals in winter, ice hockey. Pell mell was another ball-and-mallet game played in a restricted area with palisades, but nonetheless similar in concept to jeu de mail. In the sixteenth century, the game was introduced to Scotland from France, and Mary Queen of Scots is recorded as having played pell mell. But since it is separately recorded that the Scottish queen also played golf, the two games can hardly have been confused in anybody's mind.

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