The game of golf has always been considered as a Scottish classic (shades of the St. Andrew's Golf Club, and of Mary Stuart Queen of Scotland, the first woman known to have played the game).

The official version is that it is about 500 years old.

The Website of the St. Andrew's Royal Golf Club tells that the game was first played in Scotland in 1400 a.D. It was clearly becoming too popular, as the game was banned in 1457 by King James II of Scotland who felt it was distracting young men from archery practice. This ban was repeated by succeeding monarchs until James IV threw in the towel and in 1502 became a golfer himself.

The Scottish makers of long bows had "expanded" into the manufacturing of golf clubs and balls but, during the wars between Scotland and England, had to be recalled to more patriotic duties and start to make again their original products.

"Gowf" or "goff" became the national Scottish game with king James III Stuart (its first "professional"), had to be temporarily outlawed to allow the manufacturing of those weapons, but was exported to England when the Stuarts got the crown and went to London.

In 1467, the Scottish Parliament decreed that "fute-ball and golfe not to be used."

The St. Andrew's Golf Club was founded in 1552 and Mary, Queen of Scots, probably was the first woman golf player. The second golf club to come into existence seems to have been the Royal Blackheath (1608) in London, followed in 1735 by the Royal Burgess Golfing Society, Edinburgh, Scotland. The British Open Golf Championship was started in 1860, and the first champion was W. Park.

The first club that appears to have been founded in the "United Provinces" of America was in Charleston, S.C., in 1786.

An apparently contradictory version with the one given above is that "John M. Fox, of Philadelphia learns [in 1885] about golf on a trip to Scotland and introduces the game to America" ("Timetables of History", see below).

However, it seems the dates of the game might go back to long before.

Recent archeological studies show it might have originated in the Italian peninsula, and been brought to Gallia and Britain by the Roman legionnaires. Thus, in an item appeared in "Il Giornale" (Wed, Dec 29, 2004, page 37, signed by Enrico Campana, <encampana@inwind.it> ): it seems its roots are in the 2,000-year old small town of Paganica (province of  L'Aquila, Abruzzo), between the rivers Aterno and Tronto, still in existence (<www.paganica.it> - e-mail << info@paganica.it >>).

Between the last century b.C. and the second a.D., that territory in the countryside of Abruzzo was one of the bases of concentration for the legions, before being sent on their long trek north (it might be remembered that, in those days, military service for the legionnaires would last 20-30 years...).

The name for the locality derives from "Iovi Paganico Sacrum" (sacred to Iupiter), a small temple dedicated by the Roman soldiers to the pagan chief god during their stays there. This small center was already connected with Rome by the consular highways and, in April-May, would host holidays with the participation of the populations of Sabins, Vestins and Umbrians, with games ("ludi") amongst which the "paganica".

In the intervals of free time between the long and strenuous sessions of military training, the legionnaires would play a game called "paganica", consisting of hitting a ball with a curved stick. The name "paganica" later changed into "cambuca".  "Buca" is Italian for "hole" (and, I can neither tell if there's any connection, nor how the term "golf" could have evolved from either paganica or cambuca).

A Dutch historian, Steven van Hengel, has documented that "kolven" was popular in Holland when that country was the dominating power on the seas, about 1297 (150 years before the Stuarts) and was played on the frozen channels under strict police surveillance and restrictions, because games played outdoors could easily convert into indoors fightings with considerable breakage of glass - and heads.

All written above is a summary from the newspaper article quoted and from  American edition ("Timetables of History" by Bernard Grun, Touchstone [Simon & Schuster], NY, 3rd ed. 1991, based upon Werner Stein's "Kulturfahrplan").