History FAQ: Original Rules of Golf
When Were the First Rules of Golf Developed?There must have been rules known to golfers dating back to the origins of the game. Otherwise, how could players have squared off in competition? What those rules were, nobody knows.
At least not until the mid-18th Century, when the first known written rules of golf were put into writing by the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. The rules were written for the Annual Challenge for the Edinburgh Silver Club in 1744.
There were 13 of them, and here they are (with a few of my explanatory comments in parentheses):
1. You must tee your ball within a club's length of the hole. (Editor: Tee boxes are still one club length in depth.)
2. Your tee must be on the ground. (Ed.: Tees, back in these days, consisted of little pyramids of sand.)
3.
You are not to change the ball which you strike off the tee.
4. You are not to remove stones, bones or any break club for the sake of playing your ball, except upon the fair green, and that only within a club's length of the ball. (Ed.: Hmmm, bones?)
5. If your ball comes among watter, or any wattery 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. (Ed.: Origins of the 1-stroke penalty for a water ball.)
6. If your balls be found anywhere touching one another you are to lift the first ball till you play the last. (Ed.: Balls touching each other? Write your own joke.)
7. At holling you are to play your ball honestly at the hole, and not to play upon your adversary's ball, not lying in your way to the hole. (Ed.: Don't do something petty such as trying to hit your opponent's ball with your own.)
8. 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. (Ed.: Stroke plus distance.)
9. No man at holling his ball is to be allowed to mark his way to the hole with his club or anything else.
10. If a ball be stopp'd by any person, horse, dog, or any thing else, the ball so stopp'd must be played where it lyes. (Ed.: Play it as it lies.)
11. 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 should break in any way, it is to be accounted a stroke.
12. He whose ball lyes farthest from the hole is obliged to play first.
13. 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. (Ed.: The first written rules also include the first local rule.)
The Rules of Golf continued to be developed over time, taking a huge step forward in 1897 when the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews formed a Rules Committee.
Since 1952, the R&A and the United States Golf Association have met every two years to set down a uniform code of rules.
Source: British Golf Museum, Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, and others | 