History of The Game Of Golf Including it's origins
 
'Francis Ouimet and the 1913 U.S.  Open:'
'The  1913 U.S. Open Championship was played at The Country Club in Brookline,  Massachusetts, one of the earliest American golf courses.  Harry  Vardon had come back to the U.S. again and entered the Open, expected  by many to win.  His primary competition was expected to come from  friend and fellow Brit Ted Ray.  No one saw Francis Ouimet coming.'
'Ouimet  was a 20-year-old amateur and former caddy from Brookline when he entered  the U.S. Open in 1913.  Tied with the two British stars after the  first three rounds of the tournament, Ouimet managed two birdies in  his final six holes to finish tied for the lead at the end of the four  rounds.  A playoff was required, and Ouimet, much to the shock  and delight of the crowd, ended the playoff round with a one-over-par  72, beating out Vardon and Ray.  Ouimet's victory became national  news, catapulting golf into even greater popularity.  Ouimet would  go on to win two Amateur Championships and a French Amateur Championship.   He would also appear on the American team in the newly-created Walker  Cup in 1922, a tournament between American and British teams played  every other year.  Ouimet would play on every Walker Cup team from  1922 to 1949, captaining the squad between 1936 and 1949.  In 1951,  he was named captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews  in Scotland, the first non-British person awarded that high honor.'
'The Amateur Game:'
'Both  in Britain and the U.S., amateur golf was as highly regarded and popular  in the 1800s and into the 1900s as professional golf.  The Amateur  Championships of Britain and America were extremely well attended and  well thought-of events.  In Britain, early amateur domination came  in the form of John Ball, who won the British Amateur Championship eight  times, three more than any other player has ever won.  Interestingly,  Ball never won twice in a row - all his victories came at least a  year apart from each other.  Ball also became the first to win  both an Amateur and Open Championship, one of only three in history  who have done so.  Harold Hilton, another top amateur of the time,  was the first to win both championships, winning two Opens and four  Amateurs.  He also became the first British player to win both  the British and U.S. Amateur Championships.'
'In  the U.S., the first amateur star was Walter Travis.  The Australian  who had moved to the U.S. as a child first won the U.S. Amateur Championship  in 1900 and would collect two more titles.  Only three other players  have ever won three or more U.S. Amateur Championships.  He also  became the first American player to win the British Amateur Open, capturing  the 1904 title.  Following Travis's success was Jerome Travers,  who between 1907 and 1913 won four titles.  Travers would also  become one of the first Amateur winners to also win a U.S. Open.'
'The  greatest amateur of the first half of the 1900s, however (and one of  the greatest of all-time) was Bobby Jones.  Of the seven U.S. Amateur  Championships between 1924 and 1930, Jones won five of them; those five  victories are also the most all-time in Amateur Championship history.   His greatest feat, another unmatched in history, came in 1930.   In that single year, Bobby Jones won the U.S. Open, the British Open,  the U.S. Amateur Championship and the British Amateur Championship.   That accomplishment was dubbed the "Grand Slam."  No other  player has ever completed a single-season Grand Slam, though five others  have completed a career Grand Slam, winning all four majors in their  career.'
'The Professional Game:'
'In  1916, as professional golf gained more ground in the U.S., players wanted  an organizational body to govern the game: U.S. amateurs had the USGA  and British players had the R&A (taking its name from the Royal  and Ancient Club), so they wanted one of their own.  That January ,  the Professional Golfer's Association of America was born.  Seven  months later, they established the first PGA Championship, played at  a course in Bronxville, New York, with $2,500 awarded to the winner  (equal to $50,000 today).  '
'The  earliest PGA star was undoubtedly Walter Hagen.  While Bobby Jones  dominated the amateur game in America, Hagen controlled the pro game.   In his career, Hagen won 11 professional titles: the U.S. Open twice,  the British Open four times and the PGA Championship five times.   His five PGA Championship titles are the most all-time, along with Jack  Nicklaus' five wins.  Four of those victories came in a row,  from 1924-27.  No other golfer has ever won more than two in a  row.  Over his career, Hagen earned about $1 million in prize money,  by far the most at the time (and equal to about $12.5 million today).'
'The Game Changes:'
'Bobby  Jones' retirement in 1930 marked the beginning of a new era in golf.   Steel-shafted golf clubs became the standard, and with the improved  equipment, scores began lowering: shooting par generally wasn't good  enough anymore.  Crossover between the amateur and pro games began  to end as well.  After Jones' 1930 Open victory, only one other  player (Johnny Goodman in 1933) won the U.S. Open as an amateur.   Amateur success in pro tournaments (or lack thereof) was attributed  to the much higher amounts of money coming into the game after 1930;  as soon as an amateur player could compete on the pro level, they made  the jump to professional.  '
'The  PGA Tour, which had been established in 1916 along with the PGA, began  recognizing the money winner of each year's tour in 1934.  That  first season, Paul Runyan was the highest money winner, tallying seven  wins and just over $6700 (equal to $107,000 today).  That same  season, the pro tour earned a profit of $135,000 ($2.16 million today).   By 1949, under the leadership of Boston promoter Fred Corcoran, the  tour earned a profit of $600 thousand, and raised that total to over  $2 million in the '60s (today, those totals are equal to $5.4 million  and $14.5 million, respectively).'
'The  1930s also saw the creation of a new tournament, the Masters (originally  named the Augusta National Invitation Tournament).  The first tourney  was held in 1934, with Horton Smith its winner, and quickly became one  of the premier golf events on the PGA Tour schedule.  The creation  of the Masters Tournament also ushered in the era of the modern majors.   Originally, the majors (the four major golf tournaments of the year)  were the British and U.S. Opens and Amateur Championships.  With  the rise of professional golf, the majors eventually became the U.S.  and British Opens, the PGA Championship and the Masters.'
'The  1930s in golf, however, failed to produce a single dominant figure.   While there were certainly star players, no one controlled the game  like the figures before.  From 1934 to 1939, no player won the  money leader title more than once.  It wasn't until 1940 and  Ben Hogan that golf once again had a titan.  Hogan, a Texan, won  the money title five times in his career.  He tallied four U.S.  Open titles, won the Masters twice, the PGA Championship twice and won  a single British Open, becoming only the second player (after Gene Sarazen)  to win the career Grand Slam in the Masters era.  He also won the  Masters, U.S. Open and British Open in the same year, 1953, considered  one of the greatest achievements in golf history.'
'Following  World War II, another golfer hit the scene, challenging Hogan's dominance:  Byron Nelson.  Nelson became the first golfer on the PGA Tour to  win more than 10 events in a single year, winning an astonishing 18  events in 1945 (an unmatched feat in history).  He also became  the first player to top $50,000 in winnings in a single year, earning  over $63,000 in '45 (worth $751 thousand today).  '
'One  golfer of the era not remembered for singular dominance by rather for  consistency was Sam Snead.  Playing across four decades on the  PGA Tour, Snead won three money titles, three PGA Championships, three  Masters and a British Open, never able to capture a U.S. Open titles  (though he was a runner-up five times, including losing a playoff in  1947).  Snead's claim to fame, however, is his PGA Tour win total.   Between his first victory on the Tour in 1936 and his last in 1965,  Sam Snead won 82 Tour events, the most all-time.  '
'Women's Golf:'
'Evidence  from the history of golf says that women have been involved and interested  in the game almost since its inception.  The Royal and Ancient  Club was founded in 1754 - within 60 years, women were on record as  being active on the course.  Within another sixty years, they had  formed a club as well, the Ladies Golf Club of St. Andrews in 1867.   In 1893, the Ladies Golf Union was formed, the governing body for women's  golf in the U.K. and Ireland.  In the U.S., women came to golf  just about as early as men; just one year after John Reid set up the  first golf course, he and his wife played another couple in mixed doubles,  the first recorded mixed doubles match in the U.S.  '
'As  in men's golf, early domination of the sport belonged to Great Britain.   However, by about the 1920s, American women had developed a greater  affinity for the game.  In 1932, The USGA and the Ladies Golf Union  established the Curtis Cup Match, a competition between American and  British teams held every two years.  The first was held in England,  with the Americans winning.  Much like its male counterpart, the  Walker Cup, early domination in the Curtis Cup belonged to the U.S.'
'Babe:'
'Though  women's golf has never achieved the same level of popularity as men's  golf, it certainly has had its stars.  Its first (and perhaps biggest)  was Mildred Didrikson Zaharias, better known as Babe.  Zaharias,  widely considered perhaps the greatest female athlete of all time, did  not excel solely in golf.  As an 18-year-old, she entered a national  track and field event in Illinois and won the team title - as the  only member of her team.  She entered eight of the 10 events, winning  six of them (and placing 2nd and 4th in the other  two) and set three world records.  She went on to win two gold  medals at the 1932 Olympics, and was disqualified from winning a third  for diving over the bar in the high jump (something that had never been  done before, and was later legalized).  With her popularity skyrocketing,  she went on a tour of the country, first as a vaudeville performer,  later playing baseball, football, basketball, trying out skiing, boxing  and fly-casting.'
'Though  she started playing golf shortly after the Olympics, she decided to  get serious about the game a few years later.  It was during this  period that she was paired with a professional wrestler at a tournament  in 1938, George Zaharias.  The two made an immediate connection  and were married shortly afterward.  However, as much as Babe's  private life was enjoying success, her professional life was not -  women's pro golf was not yet established, and the only two major tournaments  were for amateurs (the National Women's Amateur Championship and the  British Ladies' Championship).  As a result, Zaharias applied  for amateur status and, in 1944, the USGA approved it.  As soon  as World War II ended and those tournaments got started up again, Zaharias  won them, winning the Women's Amateur Championship once, in '46  and the British Ladies' Championship once, in '47.  By this  time, women's pro golf was finally starting to come together.'
'There  have been a number of major championships in women's golf throughout  the years.  The earliest is the Women's Western Open, which began  play in 1930.  The second was the Titleholder's Championship  in 1937, the third the U.S. Women's Open in 1946.  All three  of these were retroactively named majors by the LPGA.  The Ladies  Professional Golfer's Association was formed in 1950 by a group of  13 golfers, one of whom was Babe Zaharias.  Of the three majors  formed during her career, Zaharias won all three, winning the Western  Open four times, the Titleholders three times and the U.S. Open three  times.'
'Sadly, she was stricken with cancer  and died in 1956 at 42. '
'Arnie's Army Storms Golf:'
'The  1950s were another period without a clear dominating figure in men's  golf.  In the decade, no player (other than Sam Snead) captured  the events winner title (awarded to the player who won the most events  in the season) and no one won the money leader title more than once.   Players like Hogan and Snead were nearing the end of their careers,  no longer ruling the scene.  Nelson had retired in the '40s.   Golf's popularity was still on the rise; it was now entering television  for the first time, as major tournaments appeared on TV on Saturdays  and Sundays.  The sport, however, needed a national figure, and  at the end of the decade, one finally appeared.'
'Arnold  Palmer, born in Pennsylvania in 1929, turned pro in 1954 after winning  the U.S. Amateur Championship, and within three years captured the events  winner title.  A year later, in 1958, he won the money title.   He would win three money titles in his career, as well as a U.S. Open  title, a British Open title and four Masters titles, at the time the  most in history.  Palmer became the game's first superstar, attracting  a horde of followers at each tournament nicknamed "Arnie's Army."   He totaled 62 PGA Tour wins in his career, ranking 5th all-time.'
'The Golden Bear and the Black  Knight:'
'Palmer's  fame was helped along by the presence of two significant rivals, Gary  Player and Jack Nicklaus.  Player was a South African who turned  professional in 1953.  He joined the PGA Tour in '57.  Within  two years, he already began to win.  His first major championship  victory came in 1959 at the Open Championship, the first of three British  Open titles he would win.  He won the PGA Championship twice and  the Masters three times.  He finally completed the career Grand  Slam in 1965 when he won the U.S. Open (his only victory there).   He is one of only eight golfers to have won the Masters three times  or more.  His last major victory came in 1978, at the Masters,  when he stormed back from a 7-hole deficit after three rounds to win  by a stroke.  He was nicknamed "the Black Knight" because he  famously wore all black while playing.  Player, though considered  a rival of Palmer, was considered more a rival of his contemporary,  Jack Nicklaus.'
'Nicklaus,  nicknamed "the Golden Bear" because of his build and hair color,  would retire from professional golf considered by many to be the greatest  golfer of all time.  During his career, he would eclipse all golfers  that came before him by winning a total of 18 majors, a record that  still stands today.  His 73 PGA Tour wins rank him second on the  all-time list.  He turned pro in 1961, winning his first major  (the U.S. Open) within a year.  He won each major at least three  times, becoming history's first three-time career Grand Slam holder.   He won the U.S. Open four times, the British Open three times and the  PGA Championship five times.  His greatest success, however, came  at the Masters.  The six-time winner of the tournament (by far  a tournament record) last won a major title at Augusta in 1986.   The win came as a shock to the golf world, as Nicklaus had last won  a major six years previous.  However, the Golden Bear had enough  magic left to capture the Green Jacket, an honorarium bestowed on each  winner of the Masters, one last time.'
'Changing and Adding:'
'In  1968, the PGA Tour, which had, since its inception in 1916 been governed  by the PGA of America, broke off, becoming its own organization.   Initially, tournament players had formed their own group, the Association  of Professional Golfers.  They quickly abandoned this, forming  the PGA Tournament Players Division, later simply named the PGA Tour.   All the records of the PGA Tour prior to the split were carried over.   In '72, Europe finally had its own official tour, the PGA European  Tour, which comprised 15 different countries.  Its all time leader  in wins is Spaniard Seve Ballesteros (who also had success on the PGA  Tour).'
'In  1974, a local board of directors in Pinehurst, North Carolina established  the World Golf Hall of Fame, inaugurating their first class that year,  comprised of Patty Berg, Walter Hagen, Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones, Byron  Nelson, Jack Nicklaus, Francis Ouimet, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Gene  Sarazen, Sam Snead, Harry Vardon and Babe Zaharias.  While the  Hall of Fame was initially a local venture, it eventually came under  the purview of the PGA, moving to St. Augustine, Florida in 1998 and  continuing as world golf's official Hall of Fame.'
'That  same year, 1974, a new tournament was established, one that would go  on to be considered alongside the four majors.  The Tournament  Players Championship, later renamed simply The Players Championship,  is played in Florida every year, dubbed by many "the Fifth Major"  though it has never officially received that distinction.  The  Players Championship awards the highest prize money of any golf tournament;  its first winner, Jack Nicklaus, received $50,000 out of a total purse  of $250,000 ($217,000 and $1.09 million today).  Nicklaus also  holds the distinction of winning the tourney three times, the most in  history.'
'The World's Number One:'
'With  the official addition of the European Tour, and its subsequent legitimization  among the world's top golfers, more and more golfers began splitting  their time between the European and PGA Tours.  Many golfers (non-Americans)  would primarily play on the European Tour, then play in the major tournaments  in the U.S.  This led to a problem for the Royal and Ancient Club:  their system of invitation to the British Open was now leaving out many  top golfers because they split time between the tours.  This led  to the development of the World Golf Rankings.  This system, endorsed  by the four majors and the six top international golf tours, ranks the  world's golfers on a points system, derived from their finishes in  tournaments.  The rankings were first released prior to the 1986  Masters Tournament - the top six were  Bernhard Langer, Seve Ballesteros,  Sandy Lyle, Tom Watson, Mark O'Meara and Greg Norman.  Interestingly,  the top three were all European players - none of them ever finished  as the money or wins leader on the PGA Tour.  However, that first  year, Greg Norman ended the year ranked number one, which he would do  six more times in his career, a record when he retired.  Only one  other golfer would tally more year-end number ones than Norman�but  we'll get to him later.'
'Between  1986 and 1997, Norman's last year at number one, there were only five  players who finished the year at number one: Norman, Ballesteros, Ian  Woosnam, Nick Price and Nick Faldo.  Of those five, only Faldo  achieved that feat more than once.  Norman dominated the world  rankings, yet only won the money title on the PGA Tour three times in  his career and only ever won titles in one major championship, winning  the British Open twice.  Other golfers of the era were big winners  in the majors: Tom Watson won five British Opens, a U.S. Open, and two  Masters, failing to capture the career Grand Slam by never winning the  PGA Championship.  Faldo won two Masters and three British Opens  while Ballesteros accomplished the same feat, and Curtis Strange became  the first player since Ben Hogan in the 1950's to win back-to-back U.S.  Opens, winning in '88 and '89 (and no player has done so since).   But on the horizon as the calendar turned to the late '90s was a player  that would capture golf's attention and awards like almost no one  else before.'
'Tiger:'
'Eldrick  Woods was born in 1975 in California, and his father Earl had him playing  golf from an incredibly early age - even appearing on a TV talk show  to showcase his talents at the age of two.  After attending Stanford  University for two years and winning the U.S. Amateur Championship three  times (including as the youngest ever, a record which stood until 2008),  he turned pro in 1996.  The man nicknamed "Tiger" immediately  became a sensation, winning the 1997 Masters with a still-record low  of -18.  The son of an African-American man and a Thai woman, he  also became the first non-white player ever to win at Augusta.   He wouldn't stop there - Woods, at present, has captured a total  of 14 major victories, second all-time to Nicklaus.  With four  Masters titles, three U.S. Open titles, three British Open titles and  four PGA Championship titles, he is also the only person besides Nicklaus  to have completed three career Grand Slams.  In 2000-01, he also  became the only person in history to hold all four majors titles simultaneously,  winning the 2000 U.S. and British Opens and PGA Championship, followed  by the 2001 Masters title.  However, since he did not win them  in the same year, it did not count as a single season Grand Slam.   Still, he managed to best Bobby Jones in 2008 when he won his 14th major, eclipsing Jones' 13.  He also has 71 PGA Tour wins, 3rd all time, only two behind Nicklaus and 11 behind Snead.  At only  34, many believe he will someday beat Snead's record.  Tiger  also holds the record for most number one year-end rankings (with 11  as of 2009) and the record for most weeks at number one (with 615 straight  weeks - 284 more than Greg Norman, who is second).  Woods has  also won more money than any other golfer in history, with his prize  money as of 2010 totaling over $93 million.'
'Golf Today:'
'Tiger  still dominates the fans' attention in golf, though due to injury  and personal problems he has failed to win a major since 2008.   TV ratings when Tiger is playing for a championship as opposed to when  Tiger isn't are considerably higher.  Still, the sport of golf  in general is strong, attracting strong TV revenues and awarding higher  and higher purses every year - for example, the Players Championship,  the highest purse in golf, awarded the equivalent of $217,000 to the  winner out of $1.09 million in its first year.  The 2010 Players  Championship gave its winner $1.71 million out of a $9.5 million purse.   Golf is going strong.  What remains to be seen is what will happen  when Tiger finally retires, and whether a new figure can arise to capture  the world's attention in the sport.'