The First Known Official Rules of Golf
You must tee your ball within one club's length of the hole.
Your tee must be on the ground. (So, no teeing off your buddy's belly button.)
You are not to change the ball which you strike off the tee
You are not to remove stones, bones or any break club for the sake of playing
your ball, except on the fair green, and that only within a club's length of
your ball.
If your ball comes among water, or any watery filth, you are at liberty to take
out your ball and bringing it behind the hazard and teeing it, you may play it
with any club and allow your adversary a stroke for so getting out your ball.
If your balls be found anywhere touching one another you are to lift the first
ball till you play the last. (hee hee)
At holeing you are to play your ball honestly for the hole, and not to play upon
your adversary's ball, not lying in your way to the hole.
If you should lose your ball, by its being taken up, or any other way, you are
to go back to the spot where you struck last and drop another ball and allow
your adversary a stroke for the misfortune.
No man at holeing his ball is to be allowed to mark his way to the hold with his
club or anything else.
If a ball be stopp'd by any person, horse or dog, or anything else, the ball so
stopp'd must be played where it lyes. (The author's personal favorite)
If you draw your club in order to strike and proceed so far in the stroke as to
be bringing down your club; if then your club shall break in any way, it is to
be accounted a stroke. (Does breaking your club over your knee count?)
He who whose ball lyes farthest from the hole is obliged to play first.
Neither trench, ditch or dyke made for the preservation of the links, nor the
Scholar's Holes or the soldier's lines shall be accounted a hazard but the ball
is to be taken out, teed and play'd with any iron club.
Also see; The History of Golf and Golf in the United States
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