A Good Walk Ruined: The History of Golf

In 1457, the Scottish Parliament, under King James II, outlawed golf and football, calling them "pointless sports" that distracted people from practicing archery. The ban was reissued in 1471 and again in 1491. The Scottish people simply ignored it. By 1502, the ban was lifted — not because parliament relented, but because the king's grandson, James IV, had discovered golf on a trip to Perth, fallen in love with it, and returned home with his own set of clubs. He declared that everyone should play. That reversal — from royal prohibition to royal endorsement — marks the moment golf stopped being a nuisance and started becoming an institution.

The Scottish Cradle

The episode makes clear that while many ancient cultures had games involving hitting a ball with a stick — Rome's paganica, China's chui wan — the game we recognize as golf indisputably came from Scotland. The word "golf" itself almost certainly came from the Dutch game colf, recorded in 1297, which involved hitting balls into holes. But the sport as played with multiple clubs, a ball, and a distant hole was established in Scotland by the mid-1400s. A golfer from the 16th century could show up with their equipment and play a recognizable round with a modern player.