Brian Bertoldo - Stuff Every Golfer Should Know

2015 by Quirk Productions, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number:
2014948251

ISBN: 978-1-59474-799-1
eBook ISBN: 978-1-59474-800-4

Designed by Andie Reid
Production management by John J. McGurk

Quirk Books
215 Church St.
Philadelphia, PA 19106
quirkbooks.com

v3.1

To my mother and father

Thank you for the love, support,
and encouragement youve given
to me over the years

Much has been written about the grip, the stance, and the myriad dynamics of the golf swing. Youll find an endless stream of advice in print and online about how to cure the many golfing ills, such as the slice or a hook. However, many of the less-mechanical nuances of the gamestuff like etiquette, history, and the dos and dontsare most often passed down from golfer to golfer. These pieces of advice and wisdom are the soul of the sport.

This book is a selection of some of this stuff a golfer should know, rather than everything a golfer should know. The pages that follow describe those elements of the game often learned through interaction with other golfers, not from golf pros or swing gurus. Sometimes these are extremely practical things; other times they are simply fun facts or the stuff of 19th hole banter. Either way, its all stuff worth knowing.

Whether youre new to the game or a veteran low handicapper, my hope is that youll come away with some worthy tidbits to pass on to your golfing partners while youre out on the course this weekend.

Heres a thorny question to start things off. It is generally accepted that the game we recognize as golf has been around for at least 600 years. As with any centuries-old game, however, its true origin is shrouded in mystery.

Dating back at least to the Roman era, people have been playing stick-and-ball games. Over time, most if not all such early sports have faded from the playing fields. Today, we have plenty of other stick-and-ball gamesbaseball, softball, hockey, even billiards, to name just a few. And, of course, theres our beloved game of golf. It seems that folks have always enjoyed whacking something around with a stick!

But lets try to stick (no pun intended) with the few facts we do have. King James II made the first written reference to golf in 1457, when he banned the game in the Scottish Act of Parliament. It seems the Scots were spending too much time playing their favorite game instead of focusing on archery practice. Those archers were mighty important in the days when the longbow dominated the battlefield. Many believe the game was being played in Scotland a century or more before the ban, plenty of time to become popular enough to warrant its interdiction in the mid-15th century.

Further evidence of Scottish heritage can be seen with sand bunkers. Its believed that Scottish shepherds brought these elements into the game, much to the dismay of golfers across the ages. The first bunker shot probably occurred when a shepherds ball fell into one of the hollows where sheep had burrowed through the grass into the sand underneath, most likely to seek shelter from the famous coastal Scottish gales. Thanks to these seaside golfers of yore, we also have links golfopen, mostly treeless courses laid out along the ocean. But, of course, many hated bunkers come with beloved links golf.

So, thats why the Scots have come to be so closely associated with golfs origin. However, its worth mentioning that the Dutch, with their game of kolven, and the Chinese, with a game called chuiwan, have also claimed to be originators of the game.