The Fascinating History of The Golf Club
If you’ve ever visited a sports gear warehouse looking for a new golf club, you’ll know that as far as choice is concerned, the golf club among the most diverse of the different sports equipment. Made from state-of-the-art materials like carbon fibre, golf clubs come in massive variety, each one catering to a particular type of player. No matter how tall you are, the length of your arms, or the kind of game you’re intending to play, finding a club that suits you and your style should never take more than an hour at any fully stocked shop.
This wasn’t always the case, and just a few hundred years ago, the golf club was quite rudimentary compared to what we use today. Mainly made out of wood and with very little range in terms of diversity, players had to generally make do with one kind of club, even if it wasn’t extremely comfortable, and the durability wasn’t particularly good. Despite this, the golf club stood the test of time, proving its staying power over a number of centuries. As with any popular pastime, like online slots Canada, the history of the golf club is long and interesting.
It Started With The Chinese
Although it wouldn’t be recognised today as golf, the Chinese were the first recorded culture to begin using sticks to knock balls into various holes on a playing course. The sticks were smaller and bejewelled, and were mostly restricted to the royals of the Chinese Song Dynasty. This was known as the game of chuiwen.
The First Beginnings of Golf
There is evidence to suggest that proto-golf games were being played in the Netherlands during the 1400s, and while similar to what would soon start up in Scotland, it still differed enough to throw it out of the ring as the first true origins of the game.
Scotland would take up the mantle, being the first country to start playing the game that we know today. Using clubs created from wood, the rules of the game were much more similar than we’re used to today. Some of the courses that these players used are still around, such as the St Andrews course.
The 1400s Onward
Skip to 400 years later, and golf was starting to make its way around the world, and gained particular popularity in the United States. Up to 30 different wooden clubs would be used on the course, and the balls were made of leather, stuffed with feathers.
In 1856, Robert Forgan starts creating a new type of golf club, one that used persimmon wood for the heads, making them stronger. Later on, as mass production became more prevalent, golf club heads would start to be made out of iron thanks to a new type of drop forging.
Today’s Clubs
The golf club didn’t see many changes over the next few decades. A few improvements here and there to provide quality of life. It would only be recently that clubs would start using more advanced types of materials, such as carbon fibre, but many still believe in an old-fashioned wooden club.