Where was golf invented?

The origins of golf are unclear and much debated. However, it is generally accepted that modern golf developed in Scotland from the Middle Ages onwards. The game did not find international popularity until the late 19th century when it spread into the rest of the United Kingdom and then to the British Empire and the United States.

A golf-like game is, apocryphally, recorded as taking place on February 26, 1297, in Loenen aan de Vecht, where the Dutch played a game with a stick and leather ball. The winner was whoever hit the ball with the least number of strokes into a target several hundred yards away. Some scholars argue that this game of putting a small ball in a hole in the ground using golf clubs was also played in 17th-century Netherlands and that this predates the game in Scotland. There are also other reports of earlier accounts of a golf-like game from continental Europe.

In December 1650, the settlers of Fort Orange (near present-day Albany, New York) played the first recorded round of kolf (golf) in America. The Dutch settlers played kolf year-round. During the spring, summer and fall it was played in fields. In the winter it was played on ice with the same rules. Then on December 10, 1659, the ruler passed an ordinance against playing golf in the streets of the same city.