ORIGIN OF GOLF
The Scots were playing golf in its very basic form (take a club, swing it at a ball, hit ball from starting point to hole in as few strokes as possible) by at least the mid-15th Century. The earliest known reference to golf comes from King James II of Scotland, who, in 1457, issued a ban on the playing of golf and football.
But the game continued to develop in Scotland over the decades and centuries, until 1744 when the first-known rules of golf were put down in writing in Edinburgh. But was it the Scots who invented golf? There's strong evidence that the Scots were influenced themselves by even earlier versions of games that were similar in nature. While many Scots firmly maintain that golf evolved from a family of stick-and-ball games widely practiced throughout the British Isles during the Middle Ages, considerable evidence suggests that the game derived from stick-and-ball games that were played in France, Germany and the Low Countries.
"Golf" derives from the Old Scots terms "golve" or "goff," which themselves evolved from the medieval Dutch term "kolf." The Dutch and Scots were trading partners, and the fact that the word "golf" evolved after being transported by the Dutch to the Scots lends credence to the idea that the game itself may have been adapted by the Scots from the earlier Dutch game.
Something else that lends credence to that idea: Although the Scots played their game on parkland (other than ice) they were using balls they acquired in trade from Holland. So does that mean that the Dutch invented golf? No, it means that golf grew out of games that were played in different parts of Europe.
But we're not trying to deny the Scots their place in golf history. The Scots made a singular improvement to all the games that came before: They dug a hole in the ground, and made getting the ball into that hole the object of the game. Golf as we know it today!