Golf is a sport in which players using many types of clubs including woods, irons, and putters, attempt to hit balls into each hole on a golf course in the lowest possible number of strokes. Golf is one of the few ball games that does not use a standardized playing area; rather, the game is played on golf "courses", each one of which has a unique design and typically consists of either 9 or 18 holes.  Golf is defined in the Rules of Golf as "playing a ball with a club from the teeing ground into the hole by a stroke or successive strokes in accordance with the Rules". It is not known exactly how, nor where the first game of golf was played. 

In 1460 French prayer book from the Touraine known as La Duchesse de Bourgogne, after a former owner. It shows teams playing considerable distances to a grazed green with target stakes (the piquet) as goals, using a curved hockey-like one-piece wooden club (the crosse) for approach shots, and sophisticated putters (the mail), a paralellepiped with three nearly parallel sets of planes, to roll round wooden balls to the target. The use of a hole on ice as a target goal, is depicted in a French book of hours dated ca. 1480; and a hole on a green, in a Flemish prayer book, ca. 1505.
Wikipedia

The New First Golfer

Golf was not Barack Obama's idea. His game was, and always will be, basketball. Golf wasn't even on his mind. But his wife, Michelle, was becoming concerned about the increasing frequency of his hard-court injuries -- the sore wrists, black eyes and sprained fingers suffered during pickup games in courts around Chicago. "Why don't you take up something less dangerous?" Michelle told her husband in early 1997. "Like golf?"

She didn't need to ask twice. Within days, Obama dragged a scuffed set of used clubs to the Jackson Park Golf Course, the historic Chicago public track. It had been nearly two decades since the newly elected Illinois state senator had played a few rounds in high school back in Hawaii. Obama wasn't quite sure how to dress for the game (one friend recalls an early round when he arrived on the first tee, on a sweltering summer day in southern Illinois, clad in a black silk shirt). And so his pals prepared themselves for what they figured would be a rare treat -- a spectacular Barack Obama crackup.

And in golf, as in life, Obama refuses to take any shortcuts. "When he'd shoot an 11 on a hole, I'd say, 'Boss, what did you shoot?' " says Marvin Nicholson, 37, the Obama campaign's national trip director and now a special assistant to the president-elect. "And he'd say, 'I had an 11.' And that's what he'd write on his scorecard. I always respected that." On the golf course during those ugly early rounds, his shots almost never worked out as he had planned. But friends say Obama never lost faith that he would, some day, improve.

"His inability to play the game at first and his frustration at not being able to compete with me did not lead him to quit or throw his clubs in the water," Link says. "I admire that, and I will admire that in his presidency -- he doesn't get frustrated out there as all of us golfers do. We take our frustrations out on that little white ball, but he doesn't. And that's his attitude about everything in life: If I want to do something, I have to learn how to do it and not give up on it."

Obama approaches the game in the same way that he conducts his politics -- maniacally methodical, aggressively competitive and devoutly risk-averse. "Every time he came out, you could tell he had gone and practiced and tried to work on his game," says James Clayborne Jr., an Illinois state senator and frequent playing partner. "He didn't like losing. He was a beginner, and sometimes he had to take the whupping. But he never liked it. He's a good athlete. Before too long, he was beating a lot of the guys who had beaten him."

read article

Best new private and public golf courses

In tough economic times, you need to know what golf courses are really worth your money. Here are the best new public golf courses to debut in 2008.
read article

Paul Azinger changed the losing culture for Americans at the Ryder Cup

You wouldn't expect boring old golf to give us the sloppiest, most joyous scene of the sports year, but the Ryder Cup has a way of uncorking unexpected emotion. In the giddy moments after the U.S. team had trounced the favored Europeans, the American players gathered on a balcony at the back of the clubhouse of Valhalla Golf Club, high above a sea of hoarse fans. Magnums of champagne were popped, and the victorious Yanks took turns schvitzing the crowd and each other, washing away a century of Ryder Cup frustration. (OK, it was merely the 21st century, as the U.S. hadn't won a Cup since 1999.) In the middle of all the fun was U.S. captain Paul Azinger, who was shampooing his players' hair with bubbly in between lusty swigs from whatever bottle he could get his hands around. All 12 of his players had contributed to the victory, but it was Azinger who had single-handedly changed the American team's culture of losing.
read article

Jasper Park Lodge Golf Course

You cannot leave the Province of Alberta before visiting the Jasper National Park. The Park is celebrating its 100th Anniversary as one of Canada’s oldest National Parks and encompasses the largest protected area in North America.

ALL ABOARD, via the Canada Transcontinental luxury train, for a non-stop five-hour ride from Edmonton to the small town of Jasper. The train trip offered photo opportunities around every bend. We could view the mountains in the glass-enclosed observation cars, have a meal in the dining car, play games in the game car, take a shower or nap, visit the lounge car for a beverage or just sit back and snap photographs of the impressive landscape from the large picture windows. Traveling by train was not only fun, but a perfect way to relax and witness the spectacular scenery of western Canada.

Upon our arrival in Jasper, we drove to one of the most beautiful mountain golf destinations in all of Canada, the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge and Golf Course. The Jasper Park Lodge Golf Course, on the shore of Lac Beauvert, is surrounded by 10,000-foot snow-capped mountains, deep green pine forests, pristine clear streams and the aqua-blue mountain lakes. Our host drove the group to the Point and Outlook Cabins, where we would reside for the next two nights. These enormous 6,000 square- foot log cabins have six bedrooms with private bathrooms, a large dining room, a veranda, kitchen and a charming living room with a stone fireplace. These luxurious cabins have hosted not only King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, but also movie stars like Marilyn Monroe! Pretty neat, “eh”?
read article and great photos

Today's Equipment Can Make A World Of Difference

This quote from sportswriter Jim Murray recently appeared on a popular golf blog: "A golfer on the scent of new clubs makes Don Juan look like a dependable nine-to-five type, the marrying kind. … He'll dance with every girl at the prom." Murray had the attraction part right, but if you've been to a demo day lately, you know it's more complicated than that. Sure, there are some golfers who are all in on the "open wallet, play better" philosophy and are willing to peel off Benjamins freely for the next great thing, but they're in the minority.

More (most, I'd say) prefer the golf equivalent of dancing with every girl at the prom—then never giving any of them a lift home. Lots of dancing. Lots of trying. No buying. Whether it's a prom date or a potential addition to their bag, that's serious bad form. It's also bad for my ego. It means that after seven years as Golf World's equipment editor, I haven't been successful in getting across one key point: New equipment is often better equipment. I know my message hasn't gotten through because I've been peeking in your bags—at munys, private clubs and pro-ams—for months. Too often what I've found has shocked me. Steel-shafted drivers. Muscleback blade irons. Wedges with nary a groove left. Even … wait for it … the occasional persimmon wood. Until six years ago Ping's K1 irons—a model nearly 20 years old—resided in my bag.

They were familiar and served the purpose just fine. Of course, that's exactly what you're telling yourself as you stare down at that Callaway Great Big Bertha II driver or those TaylorMade Firesole irons you're playing, isn't it? Near my desk are a few muscleback blades and almost everyone who stops by picks them up, lays them down in the address position and says, "Boy, these look sweet!" It's that traditionalist inside us that we don't want to part with. But unless you have your own parking spot at a PGA Tour event (my co-workers do not—and most likely neither do you) then it is time to move on. "Fine" just isn't good enough.

read article