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==Early History==The origins of golf are not universally agreed upon and there are disputes on when exactly the ancestors of the game emerged. There are records of a Roman game called <i>Paganica</i> that comprised of a ball stuffed with feathers and hit with wooden sticks. While the game is very different from today's golf, the sort of Roman game may have inspired later Medieval memory and reemergence of a similar game that then led to golf. Other similar games may include the Chinese game of <i>Chuiwan</i>, which also involved a stick and players tried to sink a ball into holes. There were sets of up to 10 clubs, with balls made of wood and holes spread across an area, where the holes each had different degrees of difficulty. The depictions also suggest there was a tee or place to hit the ball toward a given hole.<ref>For more on the ancient origins of golf, see: Mallon, Bill, and Randon Matthew Newman Jerris. 2011. Historical Dictionary of Golf. Historical Dictionaries of Sports, no. 3. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press.</ref>
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Admin moved page How did the game of golf emerge? to How did the game of golf emerge
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[[File:Hendrick WGA01076.jpg|thumbnail|left|300px|Figure 1. Painting from 1615 showing the development of early golf.]]
The game of golf today is globally popular and watched by millions on television. The origins of the sport may go back to ancient periods, but most historians trace the definitive beginning of the sport to Medieval Scotland and/or the Netherlands. However, it was in the 19th century that the sport emerged as both a modern one and started to become a global phenomenon. Like most sports, the game of golf evolved fairly slowly over time. The equipment and courses played by modern golfers would have amazed Scottish golfers from the 15th Century.
==What are the Origins of Golf?==
The origins of golf are not universally agreed upon and there are disputes on when exactly the ancestors of the game emerged. There are records of a Roman game called <i>Paganica</i> that comprised of a ball stuffed with feathers and hit with wooden sticks. While the game is very different from today's golf, the sort of Roman game may have inspired later Medieval memory and reemergence of a similar game that then led to golf. Other similar games may include the Chinese game of <i>Chuiwan</i>, which also involved a stick and players tried to sink a ball into holes.
One possible modern origin is in the Medieval Netherlands, where the term "golf" seems to have a Dutch origin. The game of <i>kolven</i> involved sticks or bats, perhaps similar to a shepherd's hook or stick, but the game may have not contained holes. The earliest records that depict golf come from Medieval paintings in the 15th century and the first book, called Tyrocinium linguae latinae, talks about daily life in the Netherlands where people played a game with sticks and at this points holes seem to have been utilized, where balls were hit into the holes.<ref>For more on the origins of the sport in Netherlands, see: Gillmeister, Heiner. 2002. “Golf on the Rhine: On the Origins of Golf, with Sidelights on Polo.” The International Journal of the History of Sport 19 (1): 2–30. doi:10.1080/714001691.
==Conclusion==
While the origins of golf are in dispute, and much national pride, particularly for Scotland, is at stake in relation to the origin of golf, what is without a doubt is that golf has established itself as one of the great professional sports. Relative to other sports, rules that formed golf were established as early as the 18th century. Like other sports, the spread of popularity rapidly occurred in the 19th century when industrialization helped provide people with more leisure time and mass production lowered costs associated with golf's equipment. Although golf was a relatively late forming sport in the United States, often eclipsed by baseball and other sports developed in the 19th century, the spread of the sport encouraged by British immigrants and professionalization for the sport helped it become of the major sports of interest in the United States. Similar to other sports, the advent of television has solidified the sport's popularity and spread to many countries today.
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