“Le golf apprend énormément sur le caractère des individus.Jouez un seul parcours avec quelqu’un, and you will know much more about him in dozens of dinners in town. Just watch how a player approaches the hole to remove the ball and you will know if he thinks to respect the green and the other players ...” Harvey PENICK
No one knows exactly the origins of golf or what are the real inventeurs.Dans many games whose names varied across regions and countries they hit a round object with a stick or cane : the paganica, la crosse, the chole or mail emerging as possible ancestors of what will become the golf.
A miniature of a French book 1244 illustrates a game whose movement is similar to that of golf and the first written mention of the word "golf" appears in Holland 1297. A few years later a window illuminating Gloucester Cathedral and a low polychrome relief of a Breton chapel detailed characters who throw a ball through a "club". But as history can still be imagined that the hole , the roots of golf are unclear and mysterious… Although French origins are now privileged.
What is clear is that golf will bind Scotland for centuries : en1457, an act of the Scottish Parliament condemns the practice of "gowf" because it harms the military training of the arc h e r s . After several bans and royal approval, l’Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers édicte en 1744, the first rules of the game, strongly inspired by the Rules of the Game Mail published thirty-seven years ago in France and the game becomes a sport.
In the nineteenth century, the invention of the lawn mower and the appearance of the ball gutta percha accelerate the development of golf. As fashion is Anglomania and the United States "take the game", Golf is exported from Scotland, finds a new breath and became a universal sport.
In 1856, some British residents in Pau inaugurate the first leg of the European continent. Then the greens are born Biarritz,Dinard, Cannes, Dieppe, Compiègne…
The first Open de France takes place 1906 and the Union of Golf courses in France is incorporated 1913.
Today, at the dawn of XXI century, more than five hundred courses there are in France and more than three hundred and fifty thousand licensees are affiliated to the French Golf Federation.
JAN,en