Golf, a game of Scottish origin, is one of the most popular recreational and competitive sports in the world.  Each participant uses a variety of clubs to drive a small ball into a succession of either 9 or 18 designated holes, over a course designed to present obstacles, in as few strokes as possible. In the United States alone more than 18 million people play golf, including over 8,200 professional players.  Golf tournaments in the United States and elsewhere are popular with spectators as well as with players and since the 1960s have received wide television coverage. 
 

History 
 

    Roman emperors apparently played a relaxing game called paganica, using a bent stick to drive a soft, feather-stuffed ball.  Over the next 5 centuries the game developed on several continents and eventually evolved into the popular Scottish game known as golfe.  Various European countries had games resembling paganica--cambuca in England, jeu de mail in France, and in the Netherlands het kolven, which was played in the American colonies as early as 1657.  The Scottish game, however, is the direct ancestor of the modern game.  The first formal golf club, the Company of Gentlemen Golfers, now the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, was established in Edinburgh in 1744.  It codified the first set of rules, which helped eliminate local variations in play.  The Royal and Ancient Golf Club, established 10 years later at Saint Andrews, Scotland, became the official ruling organization of the sport. Its rules committee, along with the United States Golf Association, still governs the sport. 

Golf in the United States 
 

    The first golf club and course in the United States was the Saint Andrews Golf Club of Yonkers, established in Yonkers, N.Y., in 1888.  The first national tournament in the United States was held in 1895.  Through a succession of outstanding players, including Walter HAGEN, Bobby JONES, Ben HOGAN, Sam SNEAD, Arnold PALMER, and Jack NICKLAUS, the Americans assumed a dominant role in the sport.  Before this long list of American champions began, however, an Englishman, Harry VARDON, helped popularize the sport in the United States.  Vardon was a six-time British champion between 1896 and 1914.  He made two extended tours of the United States in 1900 and 1913, winning the U.S.  Open on his first tour and losing to a young American, Francis Ouimet, on his second.  Americans marveled at his style and ability and began to copy him.  Jones was one of those he influenced.  Jones and Hagen became standouts whom 
Americans could emulate in the era following Vardon's visit. 
    For many years, however, golf was a sport played almost exclusively by the rich, even though many of the tournament golfers came from humble backgrounds.  Not until the 1960s, when Arnold Palmer captured the imagination of the public, did golf become universally popular.  Palmer's ascendancy coincided with the increased coverage of sports on television.  At the same time, the number of municipal golf courses was rising.  By the end of the 1980s there were about 13,000 golf courses, public and private, in the United States, which had become the largest training ground in the world for outstanding golfers. Americans have long dominated the list of top 20 players, measured by the amount of money won in Professional Golfers Association (PGA) tournaments.  However, in recent years a number of impressive European golfers have gained top professional standing. 
    Among the major men's tournaments are the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA.  Women golfers have their own tour, sponsored by the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), the governing body for about 600 women professionals. Their four major tournaments are in the LPGA, the U.S.  Women's Open, the duMaurier Classic in Canada, and the Nabisco Dinah Shore tournament.  Outstanding women golfers have included Babe Didrikson ZAHARIAS, Kathy WHITWORTH, Nancy LOPEZ, JoAnne CARNER, Pat BRADLEY, and Amy ALCOTT. 
Although professional golf has thoroughly overshadowed amateur competition since the retirement (1930) of Jones, the annual U.S.  Amateur championships continue to be played, and intercollegiate play is widespread and governed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which sponsors yearly national championship tournaments with both team and individual competition for both men and women. 
 

International Play 
 

    Golf is played, to some extent, in most countries of the world. In Japan, for instance, golf is sometimes regarded as the national pastime.  The World Cup (professional) and the World Amateur Team Championship are the most significant international tournaments.  The former, held annually since 1953, awards both a team and an individual prize.  The latter, held biennially since 1958, is strictly a team competition and has been dominated by the United States.  The Ryder Cup, begun in 1927, is a biennial men's professional competition that used to be between a U.S.  team and one representing England, Scotland, and Ireland.  In 1979 the latter team was expanded to include members from all of Europe.  The Walker Cup and Curtis Cup are amateur competitions for men and women respectively, between teams from the United States and England, Scotland, and Ireland.  The former began in 1922 and since 1947 has taken place in odd-numbered years.  Curtis Cup competition began in 1932 and is held in even-numbered years.  The U.S.  teams have won the majority of both these matches. 

Rules 
 

    The basic golf rules are internationally uniform for both men and women.  A player is permitted to carry a selection of up to 14 clubs of varying shapes, sizes, and lengths.  The U.S.  golf ball is a minimum of 1.68 in.  (4.26 cm) in diameter;  the British ball is slightly smaller.  The game changed considerably in the early 20th century when the B.  F. Goodrich Company of Akron, Ohio, invented a lighter, tightly wound, rubber-threaded ball, which replaced the gutta-percha ball used in the 19th century. 
    A golf course generally has 18 holes spread over a landscaped area that customarily includes a number of hazards--water, rough, sand traps (also known as bunkers), trees--that are designed to make the game more difficult.  Difficulty is also increased by the varying distances among holes.  Play on each hole is begun at the tee area, from which players "tee off" or "drive" the ball into the fairway.  At the end of the hole--which can vary in length from about 150 to 600 yards (135 to 550 m)--is the putting green, which surrounds the actual hole, or "cup," into which the ball must be putted in order to complete the hole.  Saint Andrews in Scotland, Augusta National in Georgia (site of the annual Masters tournament), and Pebble Beach in California have some of the most famous and difficult courses. 
Golf is usually played by groups of two to four people who move throughout the course together, each participant taking a turn to play his or her ball.  The ball must be played as it lies, except in unusual circumstances when the rules allow for the ball to be moved to a slightly better position.  In stroke competition the total number of strokes used to move the ball from the tee to the hole is recorded as the player's score for that individual hole.  The player who uses the fewest strokes to complete the course is the winner.  In match play scores are compared after every hole, and a player wins, loses, or halves (ties) each hole. 
    As the game has developed, the courses have become more difficult to play, and the most successful players are those who are able to drive the ball more than 200 yd (183 m) from the tee, approaching most holes with fewer than three shots. Each course has established an average number of shots (par) necessary to reach a hole (usually depending on length), and thus an average number of shots needed to complete the course. Most championship-caliber professionals score in the mid-60s to low 70s, depending on the tournament and course.  Golfers use a peculiar and distinct language to describe their scoring--a birdie is a score on any one hole that is one stroke less than par, and an eagle is a score on a hole that is two less than par.  A hole in one, the rarest of golfing events, is scored when the player drives the ball into the hole with only one stroke. 
 

Picture Captions 
 

Ben Hogan (1912-  ) was a dominant figure on the professional golf tour during the 1940s and '50s.  He won more than 60 tournaments and was the sport's leading money winner during five seasons (1940-42, 1946, and 1948).  At the close of his competitive career, Hogan formed the Ben Hogan Company, a successful manufacturer of golfing equipment. 

Bobby Jones (1902-71), the greatest amateur golfer and perhaps the greatest golfer ever, never lost his amateur status.  He retired after his most successful season, 1930, when he won the Amateur and Open championships of both the United States and Great Britain. 

The American golfer Jack Nicklaus (1940-  ) has won each of the four annual Grand Slam golfing events--the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA--at least three times in his career, far surpassing his closest rivals, both historical and contemporary.  Nicklaus also designs golf courses, several of which have been used for PGA tour events. 

Arnold Palmer  (1929-  ) became the first professional golfer to earn more than $100,000 in one year and the first to earn $1,000,000 in his career. His immense popularity rescued, and ensured success for, the PGA tour in the late 1950s and the 1960s, and his participation during the 1980s on the Senior PGA tour (for golfers ages 50 and over) ensured that agenda's success.  Palmer won the U.S. Senior Open in 1981. 

Nancy Lopez (1957-  ) emerged in the late 1970s as the fastest-rising woman professional golf star.  In 1978 she won 9 tournaments, including a record 5 straight and the LPGA championship tournament.  By the late 1980s, Lopez had won $2.7 million and over 40 tournaments. 

Golfer Lee Trevino (1939-  ) has won the men's U.S. Open twice (1968, 1971), the British Open twice (1971-72), and the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) title twice (1974, 1984).