Golf is a sport in which players using many types of clubs including woods, irons, and putters, attempt to hit balls into each hole on a golf course in the lowest possible number of strokes. Golf is one of the few ball games that does not use a standardized playing area; rather, the game is played on golf "courses", each one of which has a unique design and typically consists of either 9 or 18 holes. Golf is defined in the Rules of Golf as "playing a ball with a club from the teeing ground into the hole by a stroke or successive strokes in accordance with the Rules"
The first game of golf for which records survive was played at Bruntsfield Links, in Edinburgh, Scotland, in A.D. 1456, recorded in the archives of the Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society, now The Royal Burgess Golfing Society. The modern game of golf spread from Scotland and has now become a worldwide game, with golf courses in the majority of affluent countries.
Golf competition is generally played as stroke play, in which the individual with the lowest number of strokes is declared the winner, or as match play with the winner determined by whichever individual or team posts the lower score on the most individual holes during a complete round.
Golf as a spectator sport has become increasingly popular, with several different levels of professional and amateur tours in many regions of the world. Players such as Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Lorena Ochoa and Annika Sörenstam have become well-recognized sports figures across the world. Sponsorship has also become a huge part of the game and players often earn more from their sponsorship contracts than they do from the game itself.
Popularity
In 2005, Golf Digest calculated that there were nearly 31,900 go
lf courses in the world, approximately half of them in the United States. The countries with most golf courses per capita, starting with the best endowed were: Scotland, New Zealand, Australia, Rebublic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Canada, Wales, United States, Sweden, and England (countries with fewer than 500,000 people were excluded). Apart from Sweden, all of these countries have English as the majority language, but the number of courses in new territories is increasing rapidly. For example, the first golf course in the People's Republic of China opened in 1984, but by 2008 there were 376 courses in that country.
In the United States, the number of people who play golf 25 times or more per year fell from 6.9 million in 2000 to 4.6 million in 2005, according to the National Golf Foundation. The NGF reported that the number who played golf at all fell from 30 million to 26 million over the same period.
The professional sport was initially dominated by Scottish then English golfers, but since 1918, The United States has produced the greatest quantity of leading professionals. Other Commonwealth countries such as Australia and South Africa are also traditional powers in the sport. Since around the 1970s, Japan, Scandinavian and other Western European countries have produced leading players on a regular basis. The number of countries with high-class professionals continues to increase steadily, especially in East Asia. South Korea is notably strong in women's golf.
Golf course
Golf is played in an area of land designated a golf course. A course consists of a series of holes, each with a teeing area, fairway, rough and other hazards, and the green with the pin (flagstick) and cup. Different levels of grass are varied to increase difficulty or to allow for putting in the case of the green. A typical golf course consists of eighteen holes, but many smaller courses may only have nine.
Early Scottish golf courses, and similarly designed courses, are mostly laid out on linksland, soil covered sand dunes directly inland from beaches. This gave rise to the common description of a seaside course as a golf links. The turn of the 20th century, with its widespread use of heavy earth-moving equipment, saw a movement toward golf course design with an emphasis on reshaping the land to create hazards, and add strategic interest. Modern golf course design has seen a return to its roots. Architects appreciate once again how to maximize the subtleties in the existing land while tempering how much soil they move.
Environmental concerns over the use of land for golf courses have grown over the past fifty years. Specific issues include the amount of water and chemical pesticides and fertilizers used for maintenance, as well as the destruction of wetlands and other environmentally important areas during construction. The UN estimates that golf courses use about 2.5 billion gallons/9.5 billion liters of water daily. If potable, this amount of water would be enough to provide drinking water for 4.7 billion people. Many golf courses in the world are irrigated with non-potable water and/or rainwater. As a result of these concerns there has been research into more environmentally sound practices and turf grasses.
Play of the sporty
Every round of golf is based on playing a number of holes in a given order. A round typicall consists of 18 holes that are played in the order determined by the course layout. On a nine-hole course, a standard round consists of two successive nine-hole rounds. Playing a hole on the golf course consists of hitting a ball from a tee on the teeing box (a marked area designated for the first shot of a hole, a tee shot), and once the ball comes to rest, striking it again. This process is repeated until the ball is in the cup. Once the ball is on the green (an area of finely cut grass) the ball is usually putted (hit along the ground) into the hole. The goal of resting the ball in the hole in as few strokes as possible may be impeded by hazards, such as bunkers and water hazards. In most typical forms of gameplay, each player plays his/her until it is holed.
Players can walk or drive in motorized carts over the course, either singly or with others, sometimes accompanied by caddies who carry and manage the players' equipment and give them advice.
Par
A hole is classified by its par; the number of strokes a skilled golfer should require to complete play of the hole. For example, a skilled golfer expects to reach the green on a par-four hole in two strokes (This would be considered a Green in Regulation or GIR): one from the tee (the "drive") and another, second, stroke to the green (the "approach"); and then roll the ball into the hole in two putts for par. A golf hole is either a par-three, -four or -five sometimes -six rarely -two and -seven.
The key factor for classifying the par of a hole is the tee-to-green distance. A typical length for a par-three hole ranges between 91-224 meters/100–250 yards; for a par-four hole, between 225-434 meters/251–475 yards; and for a par-five hole, between 435 and 630 meters/476–690 yards. The slope of the course (uphill or downhill) can also effect the par rating. If the tee-to-green distance on a hole is predominantly downhill, it will play shorter than its physical length and may be given a lower par rating and the opposite is true for uphill holes. Par ratings are also affected by factors such as the placement of hazards or the shape of the green which can sometimes effect the play of a hole such that it requires an extra stroke to avoid playing into hazards.
Eighteen hole courses may have four par-three, ten par-four, and four par-five holes, though other combinations exist and are not less worthy than courses of par 72. Many major championships are contested on courses playing to a par of 70, 71, or 72. In some countries, courses are classified, in addition to the course's par, with a course classification describing the play difficulty of a course and may be used to calculate a golfer's playing handicap for that given course (c.f. golf handicap).
Scoring
In every form of play, the goal is to play as few strokes per round as possible. Scores for each hole can be described as follows:
| Term on scoreboard | Specific term | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| -4 | Condor | four strokes under par |
| -3 | Albatross | three strokes under par |
| -2 | Eagle | two strokes under par |
| -1 | Birdie | one stroke under par |
| 0 | Par | strokes equal to par |
| +1 | Bogey | one stroke over par |
| +2 | Double Bogey | two strokes over par |
| +3 | Triple Bogey | three strokes over par |
Equipment
Professional golf
The majority of professional golfers work as club or teaching professionals (pros), and only compete in local competitions. A small elite of professional golfers are "tournament pros" who compete full time on international "tours". Many club and teaching professionals working in the golf industry start as caddies or a general interest in the game, finding employment at golf courses and eventually moving on to certifications in their chosen profession. These programs include independent institutions and universities, and those that eventually lead to a Class A golf professional certification.
Golf tours
There are at least twenty professional golf tours, each run by a PGA or an independent tour organization, which is responsible for arranging events, finding sponsors, and regulating the tour. Typically a tour has "members" who are entitled to compete in most of its events, and also invites non-members to compete in some of them. Gaining membership of an elite tour is highly competitive, and most professional golfers never achieve it.
The most widely known tour is the PGA Tour, which tends to attract the strongest fields, outside the four Majors and the three World Golf Championships events. This is due mostly to the fact that most PGA Tour events have a first prize of at least US$800,000. The European Tour, which attracts a substantial number of top golfers from outside North America, ranks second to the PGA Tour in worldwide prestige. Some top professionals from outside North America play enough tournaments to maintain membership on both the PGA Tour and European Tour.
The other leading men's tours include the Japan Golf Tour, the Asian Tour (Asia outside Japan), the PGA Tour of Australasia, and the Sunshine Tour (for Southern Africa, primarily South Africa). These four tours, along with the PGA and European Tours, are full members of the trade body of the world's main tours, the International Federation of PGA Tours. Two other tours, the Canadian Tour and the Tour de las Américas (Latin America), are associate members of the Federation. All of these tours, except for the Tour de las Américas, offer points in the Official World Golf Rankings to golfers who make the cut in their events.
Golf is unique in having lucrative competition for older players. There are several senior tours for men 50 and older, the best known of which is the U.S.-based Champions Tour.
There are six principal tours for women, each based in a different country or continent. The most prestigious of these is the United States based LPGA Tour.
All of the leading professional tours for under-50 players have an official developmental tour, in which the leading players at the end of the season will earn a tour card on the main tour for the following season. Examples include the Nationwide Tour, which feeds to the PGA Tour, and the Challenge Tour, which is the developmental tour of the European Tour. The Nationwide and Challenge Tours also offer Official World Golf Rankings points.
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