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LONDON: Having previously laid dubious claims to being the birthplace of football and the Japanese martial art of judo, the Chinese have now added golf to their list of inventions.
Scotland has always been considered as the traditional home of golf since the 15th century but now, according to The Scotsman, a Chinese academic has claimed that golf was played among the noble classes in China some 500 years earlier. for more click here
The game of golf was introducd it is believed through Leith because of the trade links with Holland. The above picture comes from a Dutch miniature dated c1500
(c) Scottish Memories
In this painting Charles I and the Duke of York are shown together in 1647. They both played Golf on Leith Links and the Coat of Arms of Charles I can be seen over the West Porch of South Leith Parish Church
From 1679 to 16S2 James, Duke of York, the king’s brother and heir to the throne, was much in Scotland, where he seemed to divide his leisure between witnessing and encouraging the cruelties of the torturing chamber and playing golf on Leith Links, then one of the chief centres of the game. The Golfer’s Land in the Canongate still survives to remind us of his match on the Links with two English noblemen, when, partnered by John Paterson, a member of a noted golfing family, he won the stakes and handed over the money to his partner, who built with it the great tenement which he decorated with his crest dexter hand grasping a golf club, per with the motto Far and Sure
As the Royal & Ancient hurtle golf into the 20th century by allowing women to compete in the Open, a group of Edinburgh golfers are working hard to return the game to a more innocent age.
The clock will be turned back for one day this summer when the World Hickory Open is played on Musselburgh Old Course. All your titanium and tungsten and other technologies are banned as competitors face the hooks and slices of outrageous fortune armed with wooden-shafted clubs and gutta percha balls as used by our golfing ancestors.
for more click on the introduction
On the 23rd of December 1729 The Hon. Alexander Elphinstone who was leading a life of idleness and pleasure in Leith while his brother was in exile met a lieutenant Swift of Lord Cadogan’s regiment (which later became the Kings own) at the house of a Mr Watson in Leith. (more…)
The first rules of golf in the world formulated not at St Andrews but on the Links of Leith. Not only this but the first Golf House in the World was on the site of what is now Queen Margaret University College in Duke St (the old Leith Academy building). Furthermore it was from Leith that St Andrews got the Rules of Golf. So in fact the true home of golf is not St Andrews but Leith! (more…)
