September 29, 2026 • 50 mins
The history of golf is a bit muddled, but once it was truly born in Scotland, it started the beginning of lifelong obsessions for people dumb enough to pick up a club and give it a try. Learn all about the early history of the most frustrating game ever invented.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too. And in this episode, we'll
get to hear Chuck do a Scottish accent a lot. Wow.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I haven't really thought about that. I do love that
Libby helped us with this, how she titled it. Um,
which I think I'm titling it something like that. But
she titled it Golf, colon, Spoiling Good Walks Since 1457.
Have you ever heard that phrase?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, that was Samuel Clements.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, how to spoil a good walk or whatever, something
like that.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
It's pretty funny. They get it. Golf is hard.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I have a question for you. Are you into golf
at all?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
You're being coy. I have been playing golf since I
was 13, but I took, like, 25 years off uh
from like kind of post-college to when i moved back
to atlanta um played maybe once or twice a year
during that time but then have gotten uh really started
playing again in 2020 uh during covid and but still
(01:14):
very casually but then like six months ago started really
getting into it again and like trying to get better
for the first time yeah how's it going I mean,
it's very hard. Emily asked me why I love golf
so much, and that's why, because golf is really, really hard.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
And so when you do it well, it feels like
you've achieved something.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
And so that's what I love about it. It's really, really, really,
really hard, and I like trying things sometimes that are really,
really hard.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
You know what they call that? The love of the game.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah. That's right. And you were kind enough to let
me make this announcement now as I'm dipping my toe
back into the podcast world. You know, I haven't done
anything like that since Movie Crush went away. And friend
of the show and friend of ours in real life,
Adam Pranica of The Greatest Generation. Adam is a golfer
(02:08):
and we play golf together and we text about it
all the time. I was like, we should do a
golf podcast, like a fun and funny one. And try
and build like a community around it because most golf
podcasts are like kind of serious or instructional.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Right.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
And I said, there's not a lot of shows out
there for guys like us that are like not great
at it. Like average golfers who just sort of the
absurdity of the sport. And Adam was in. And so
we're doing a new show.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
That's awesome. I predict you guys will make a great pair.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I hope so. Yeah, it's called three putt bogey. And
we think that's kind of a fun and funny name that,
you know, that's kind of one of the worst things
that can happen on a golf course. That means you
have like on a par three, for example, you've hit
a great tee shot onto the green. You got a
shot at birdie, but you put it three times instead
for a bogey. So that really kind of sums up
where we are in our game. And I think it's
(02:59):
very relatable. And it's out now. It released on, I think,
episode one was Friday, September 25th. So you can go
out and listen to it right now wherever you get
your podcasts. And also follow us on socials, 3 Putt
Bogey Podcast on Instagram. We're going to have lots of
fun content on there.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Wow, that's a great name.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Thanks. Well, I mean, we hope it gets across like
what it is, which is, again, average guys having a
good time. What we're hoping to do is build a
community of, like, support. Because, like I said, it's a
hard game and, like, you know. The worst thing you
can do is go and play golf with people that
are like really want to beat you or like want
to gamble at golf and stuff. Like that's not my deal.
(03:39):
Adam and I are both kind of like cheerleaders when
we play with each other and with friends.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Do you dress like cheerleaders when you play?
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Well, sometimes on Fridays.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
That's cool. I think that's definitely the better way to
go is to do that rather than be like you
remember that one. Character on the pit who was hospitalized
because he did too much cocaine and drank too much
and blacked out and tried to kill somebody.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah, the golfer. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
That's who I think of when you're describing the type
of golfer you just did. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
I mean, that's not me. Like, if you want to
go out there and play for money and really compete
against your friends, that's great if that's your deal. But
we're trying to build a show that's fun and encouraging,
and I hope people give it a shot.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah. So maybe leave your fleece vest at the door
when you listen to your podcast. That's right.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
But all this to say, we are about to start
an episode here in three, two, one about the history
of golf, because I think it's fairly interesting. It is.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
One of the things I found quite interesting about it
is that it has not only some unclear origins. There's
a lot of people who just kind of say whatever
they want about the history of golf and it gets
spread around. It's like, yep, that's the history. And thankfully
we have great writers and researchers like Livia to be like, actually,
(05:02):
that's not true at all, which is one of my
favorite things to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
And I think some of the confusion comes in because
like many, many ancient places had games that involved hitting
a ball with a stick and Yeah. Sometimes into a hole.
So I think it's very easy for someone to say like, hey,
in ancient Rome, they had a game called Paganica. And
(05:27):
that was that was the first golf or someone might say, yeah, no.
In China, they had a game called Chui Wan or
hit ball and they had rules like golf. And so
it was kind of like golf. But I think we
can mostly agree that like golf, as we know, it started,
of course, in Scotland.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah, and one of the stories goes that it was
bored Scottish shepherds who were like, let me use my
shepherd's hook to bat some rocks toward a hole in
the ground. That's probably not correct either. What they think,
at the very least what Livia thinks, is that— The
(06:06):
word golf, at least, if not golf itself, can actually
be found in Holland. And this isn't where, like, golf
comes from. I'm not trying to rewrite history here or
shake the boat. Everybody knows that, yes, like you said,
golf came from Scotland. But it's possible that the inspiration
for golf in Scotland came from there. At the very least,
it's almost certain that the word golf came from the Dutch.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
That's right. Except it was C-O-L-F. That was a game
that at least that word was recorded in 1297 that
did involve hitting balls into holes. It was probably a
little more like cricket. But golf had other spellings throughout
the years. G-O-U-F-F.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
G-O-I-F-F.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
G-O-I-F-F. G-O-W-F-F. G-O-L-P-H.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Golf.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
That's right. You've seen Caddyshack, right? I know you're not
into golf, but have you seen that movie?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Yeah, I have. I'm more of a Happy Gilmore fan,
meaning it's one of my favorite movies. But Happy Gilmore 2? No, sir.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Oh, I didn't know there was a second one.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Oh, just wipe it from your memory that there is
a second Happy Gilmore.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
All right. Will Ferrell has that new show too.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
What new show? A golf show?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah. It's called Hawk.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I had no idea golf was so popular.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
It's super popular right now.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I'm just kidding. Okay.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Well, I didn't know if you knew because it's kind
of come and gone as far as like, I think
it's like peak popularity.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Oh, really? I actually didn't know that. I didn't know
it had ever gone. I thought it was always generally
widely and wildly popular.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah. I mean, it's always been pretty popular. I mean,
I've got some stats for you if you want.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, lay them on me.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Golf is 48 million Americans participate.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
There's only 50. It is.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
A.
Guess how much just United States annual economic effect golf
has in the United States.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I mean, obviously, I'm going to say it's in the billions,
but I have no guess between.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
$ 226 billion.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
That is not what I was going to guess.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Responsible for 1.65 million jobs. Wow. $ 80 billion in wages
in the U.S. And this is because, you know, golf
gets a bad rap because it's sort of an environmental
nightmare in a lot of ways. Yeah. So I'm trying
to highlight some of the good things. Sure. But golf,
$ 4. 6 billion annual in charitable contributions generated through golf, which
(08:30):
is more than all other pro sports combined. Oh, wow.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
That's a great one, too. Nice work.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Which is pretty good. But jumping back to Caddyshack, I
mentioned that because there's that one great line from Ted
Knight when he's talking about the history of golf. He says,
but it was golf without the L.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I don't remember that one.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
The thing I remember is, of course, the baby Ruth
in the bottom of the pool.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Right. Of course.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
So, yeah. So we've got at least the word golf
from the Dutch. But golf, as we spell it today, G-O-L-F,
that was around the mid-1400s. And this is when people, well,
maybe not the mid-1400s, at least within the next hundred years,
(09:15):
People started golfing in Scotland, doing what we would recognize
as golf today. Like I have this stick or whatever,
and I have another one to do, to like drive with.
I have one to putt with essentially. I'm hitting a
ball and I'm trying to get it into a hole
and the hole's way over there. So like what you could,
(09:35):
if as a golfer, Chuck, you could show up in
16th century Scotland and be like, let's play. And you
guys would generally be able to work it out.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah. Um, the earliest golf was sort of an urban version,
like where you played in the streets of the town. Uh,
they called that short golf. Um, but that was obviously
not the same as what they called long golf, which
was out in the pasture or a field. And we'll
talk about that evolution a little bit more. But, you know,
we know for sure golf was a thing then because
(10:07):
in 1457, there was an act of parliament in Scotland
signed by King James II that outlawed golf and football
because he said there were pointless sports and you should
be practicing like archery or something instead. And then there
were also complaints about people playing golf instead of going
to church. And that's where I found this kind of
(10:27):
fun little thing called Sunday sticks, which was a sneaky
way to get some golf in. Apparently they would flip
over a golf club and hold it as a cane.
So you're holding like the head of the golf club
and walk around, pretend like as if you needed a cane.
And then you flip that thing over and you can
just play a quick hole of golf with it, I guess.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Wow. Man, you really have to love golf to try
to deceive your entire town.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah, and your Lord and Savior.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Exactly. Jesus is like, I see you for what you are.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
That's right. And quit using my name in vain out
there on the course.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Right. So that prohibition on golf from 1457, from King
James II, it apparently didn't take because in 1471 and 1491—
The Scottish Parliament said, like, stop playing golf. You're not
allowed to play golf. And it's probable that the golf
(11:24):
that they were referring to was short golf. Yeah. Which
is I don't I didn't catch how how much in
depth you went with short golf. Did you just mention it? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Just that, you know, they played it sort of in
town on the streets of like the village.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
That was a problem in and of itself because, you know,
you had glass windows and, you know, village people walking around.
So you don't want to hit them. But they were
probably banning short golf. Instead, if you were, say, aristocracy
and not like a working class person or a peasant
or something like that, you were like, OK, just ban
short golf. I'm going to play this new form called
(12:03):
long golf and I'm going to go play it in
the pasture lands.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
That's right. Or a golfing ground. Or a lynx. And
that's where, you know, that's where that name first comes from.
Mainly around Scotland's east coast at the time. This is where,
you know, they weren't building a lot of buildings because
it was oceanside. It was pretty sandy. So there was,
you know, it was wide open land. Rabbits everywhere. Apparently
(12:29):
there's lore that rabbits may have, like rabbit holes were
some of the first golf holes.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Not gophers. But. You know, some of these early terms
like links like had been around since the very beginning.
And also this idea that you go out to play
like nine holes in the back end on the back nine.
Like they were saying stuff like that. And they borrowed.
I never knew this. The term fairway, which if you
don't know anything about golf, when you tee off and
(12:57):
you hit it out there and hopefully the middle of
that green expanse that the middle of that green expanse
where the grass is the shortest is the fairway. And
that term is a sailing term, meaning the easiest direction
to go, which makes a lot of sense in terms
of golf.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
For sure. So, OK, so we're in Scotland. It's the
15th century. Parliament keeps trying to ban golf. The Scottish
people say no. And then finally, in 1502, they're like, fine,
we're going to lift the ban on golf. Everybody can
play golf. And the reason why is that not coincidentally,
James IV, who is the grandson of James II, who
(13:33):
was the first one to proclaim golf illegal. He went
to Perth in Scotland, not Australia, and he found out
about golf and he fell in love with it so much.
He came home with his own set of clubs and
was like, I'm into golf now. Let's all play golf
all the time.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
That's right. There are also apparently receipts of the king
purchasing clubs in Edinburgh and St. Andrew around the same time.
So the royals are getting into it. So that means
everyone else can.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Well, not quite everyone, as we'll see. But Mary, Queen
of Scots, the granddaughter of King James IV, she ruled
from 1542 to 1567. Apparently she was into golf and
is one of the first women to just have any
sort of impact on the game at all, especially early on.
And apparently her enemies used that against her. They would
(14:23):
spread rumors that she played just a few days after
her second husband died. And that obviously was a violation
of how someone was thought to like mourn or like
how someone should mourn rather, but also like a bit
of a smear campaign that's just like it's not an
appropriate game for ladies at the time. And look at
(14:44):
what Mary Queen of Scots is doing.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Exactly. I say we come back or take a break
and then come back and possibly, if we're lucky, we'll
talk a little more about the history of golf.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Let's do it. Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Okay, Chuck. So we're back. And I think we kind
of have gotten across. It's really difficult to trace the
history of golf in any really legitimate manner and not
just make stuff up. That sounds cool. There are some
surviving documents that give us an idea of the early
contours of what golf was like. There's a textbook from
(15:45):
the 17th century, a diary from the 17th century, an
embarrassing poem from the 18th century. And a book of
golf instructions from the mid-19th century. And all of them
put together, kind of giving historians a pretty good view
on golf.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah, for sure. The poem I thought was pretty interesting.
That was in 1743 by Thomas Matheson. And it was,
you know, if you're writing a parody epic poem, and
it's called The Golf, G-O-F-F, as Ted Knight would love. And,
you know, there was a character, a goddess named Golfinia.
(16:22):
And it like that, that means it's pretty well in
the public like specter at this point.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Did you did you look that up? Oh, yeah. It's
a I mean, it is an epic poem about golf.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
There's also that diary was by a guy named Thomas Kincaid,
who is a medical student at Edinburgh University, which we toured,
I think, at least some of their some parts of it.
But he was there in 1687. And he was like,
his diary was essentially like, I'm playing golf today and
this is what I'm doing. My swing's not so great.
(16:57):
I need to improve my swing. Here's how we handicap.
Here's what clubs are made of. Like, he was just
basically leaving a document for future historians that they couldn't
have asked for more than.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, he would have started his own podcast. Had that
been around at the time. But instead, he had a diary.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Which was very cool. And then, you know, there was
an instructional book called The Golfer's Manual. by a keen hand,
and that was 1857, and that was like the first
printed book of instruction from H.B. Farney. So golf is
definitely a thing by that point. St. Andrews is recognized,
the old course that is there, as the oldest surviving
(17:36):
golf course that's still around. It's been operating since at
least 1552. That's impressive. Which is, yeah, just incredible.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
It's still around. They'll still play the Open there every year.
I'm not sure if it's like a set number of
years that they go back, but they still play it there.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
The British Open?
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah. It's called specifically the Open.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
People call it the British Open to differentiate it from
the U.S. Open, but I think the Scots are very
much like, no, it's just the Open.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
There it is.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
The Open.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Give us more, baby.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
That's all you get.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Here, I've got one for you.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
The Archbishop of St. Andrews, his name was John Hamilton,
back in 1552. This is how we know that it
was being played on at least since then. It was
probably being played on long before then because in 1552,
John Hamilton's like, fine, here's a charter. You people of St. Andrews,
my congregants, my people, you guys can play on the
(18:42):
links for, and here's where you do a John Hamilton
impression from 1552.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Golf, football, shooting, and all games.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Beautiful. That was a dead on John Hamilton.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
I don't know why my Scottish accent sounds like I'm
about to choke at any second.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
I feel like most Scottish impressions are like that. Like
think about groundskeeper Willie. He's like really worked up all
the time.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
No, that's true. And I think I'm also just doing
Mike Myers from So I Married an Axe Murderer.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah. Is that the if it's not Scottish, it's crap family?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Yeah. Hit.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Move. It was good stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, it was very good stuff. That was a fun movie.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Was it? I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, it was funny.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
I've seen all the Austin Powers movies. Does that count
for anything?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yeah, one of those is good.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
There was Fat Bastard. He was Scottish.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Boy, what an offensive character he was.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
So early on, these golfing grounds or links were, they
just used sort of what the land gave them, the
If there was a pond, that was a hazard. If
there was a big, like, hill in the middle of
the fairway, that was maybe not a hazard, but something
you had to get through.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Stationary tornado, hazard. That's right.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
But they essentially created, like, the model for what a
golf course would be and what would look like as
people started to, like, construct and build golf courses. And
also the number of holes. I think the old course
was originally 22 holes, but in 1764, they did some
consolidating and eventually ended up with 18. And they were like,
that's the standard.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah, that's the thing. That's why everybody's so into Scotland
as the origin or the cradle of golf, because not
only is that where golf really started and developed, that's
where like a lot of the terms are from, like
you said, links, A lot of the rules, a lot
of the standards, like the 18-hole golf course, they all
just kind of came from Scotland and spread from there.
(20:47):
Indisputably came from Scotland and spread from there. That's what
the beautiful thing is. We finally have made it out
of the murky past into the much clearer past for
the history of golf.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
That's right. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews,
or otherwise known as the RNA, originally was known as
Society of St. Andrews Golfers. That was founded in 1754.
By 22, quote, noblemen and gentlemen. And they, the RNA
is who basically runs the show. They took responsibility for
(21:18):
maintaining that old course, building the new course. So the
new course was 1895. That shows you how old golf is.
And they became the authority. I think in the late
19th century, the RNA became the UK's authority for the
rules of the game. And they managed the Open or
the British Open, as we call it. And then other
(21:39):
stuff like big golf events over there.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, I saw that they are– I saw someone equate
them to the Augusta National Golf Club where they're just
an authority on the game and they are– they have
such authority they can actually issue rules and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Is that– that works out? I mean, it was Bleacher Report.
They're pretty legit.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
I mean, that sounds about right. You're talking about where
they play the Masters here in Augusta, Georgia, a place
where I've never been.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Yeah. Yeah, that's the one. I'm dying to go to
the Masters, but it's really, really hard to get tickets.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yes, and I think you should do a call-out for
anyone who can get you Masters tickets to get them
to you.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah, if you want to host me at the Masters,
I mean, I can't believe I've never asked this. Please
and thank you.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Yeah, you'll bring the crackers for the pimento cheese.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
I'll bring everything.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So....
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
You are a great guest. I remember when we were
in Canada, you picked up after yourself all the time.
You pushed each chair back into the table. Like, you
were a great guest.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So, and I realize I'm being kind of jokey in
this episode. I'm not usually very jokey. But that's because
I have so little to offer in this episode that
I have to be the color commentator, I feel like.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
That's right. You're doing great.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Like, you're Vern Lundquist. And I'm Dennis Miller in this one.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
So we should talk about the 13 articles. There was
an event in 1744. It was a group known as
the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. And they created a
competition called the Silver Club. And in preparation for this,
they wrote out a document called the 13 articles. And
that was sort of the first official rule book of golf,
(23:28):
which is now like very much expanded today. As far
as the official rules of golf with like the PGA
and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I saw rule 11 was that you had to memorize
and then recite Matheson's epic poem, The Golf. Oh, wow. Yeah,
which is long.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Probably hard.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
So golf finally showed up in England in 1603. Again,
it had been being played for 150 years by then.
But Scotland and England frequently went to war. They weren't
very friendly during this period. They became much friendlier when Mary,
Queen of Scots' son, James VI of Scotland, who was
(24:07):
the Scottish ruler at the time, he inherited the English
throne and he became James I of England. And so
Scotland and England became much cozier companions. And when James
I showed up, he had his crew with him, his entourage,
court as you call it. And among his court members
were a lot– or courtiers– were a lot of people
(24:28):
who were avid golf players. And just because they had
moved to a country that had never heard of golf before,
that wasn't going to stop them from continuing to play
anytime they could.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Yeah, it sounds like he's like, these are my boys
and we like to golf.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
So go build me a course. And that's what happened.
They established a course in Blackheath near the Royal Palace
in Greenwich. And it didn't like spread far and wide though.
In fact, I think- It was like post-World War I
was when you finally got to 1,000 golf courses in
England and 200,000 golf enthusiasts. So in that interim time,
(25:10):
apparently a lot of doctors, like Scottish professionals living in England,
brought the sport over. People would go on vacation maybe
to Scotland, discover it, and come back and be like,
why aren't we playing golf in England yet? And eventually
they would get some momentum going. Someone would rent some land.
Someone would create a course, and they just started opening
(25:31):
eventually at the rate of about one golf course a
week by the 1890s in England.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yeah, but then those courses would close down very quickly
just because it was like overbuilding malls at the time.
Or in my family's experience, racquetball clubs in the 80s.
My family was on a terrible streak in the early
mid-80s where we would join a racquetball club, the whole family–
And a month later, the place would shut down and
(25:58):
there went our money. And then we'd move on to
the next one. It easily happened at least three times
to us, if not more. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
It's crazy to remember when racquetball had a grip on
the United States in the 80s. It was fast and
wild and then basically went away. You never hear about
racquetball anymore.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
No. I'm sure there's people who still play it quite
a bit.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Oh, yeah. I love racquetball. I haven't played in Since
you and I did that commercial thing.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
I forgot about that.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
It's like 14 years ago.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
That was awesome. It is great. The court sounds cool.
It's fun to watch.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
It's a great workout.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, for sure. And the bags are usually pretty awesome,
especially the early 80s racquetball bags. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
And pickleball, please. Get back to racquetball, people. That's what
I say.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Sure. Let's get back to it.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Maybe you and I should invest in a racquetball court.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Franchise?
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
We got to figure out a good name for it.
And it can't be some course reference to balls.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Right. Yeah. That's immediately what I thought.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
No, we're going to have to workshop it further, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
All right.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Speaking of workshopping, they had to workshop the number of
holes because, you know, 18 was the official number. But
most of these golf courses in England were nine hole courses.
And there's still plenty of nine hole courses out there.
But eventually they expanded to 18. And one downside to golf,
you know, early on in England was it drove up
the price of land quite a bit and also displaced
(27:28):
like cattle grazing and stuff like that and angered a
lot of farmers.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
I mean, think about that, Chuck. Like England is not big,
but this is like 19th century England just had started
the Industrial Revolution and. Like there's already land that's there's
like a land grab going on for golf courses. It's
already having an effect. Like that's how golf course crazy
England went at the time. And yeah, some of the
(27:53):
farmers push back. I think that they would drive their
cattle onto the commons to graze during golf games to
basically send the message like take it elsewhere, guy. Yeah,
that's the best I could come up with. I'm a
terrible color commentator.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Well, you just can't say what you would say, which
is filthy. That's true.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
You know me so well.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, yeah. We've done pretty good over the years avoiding
that kind of filth and flooring.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
So a lot of these courses were created by the
sort of upper class and the aristocratic class, obviously. Sometimes
it might be a local government. But, you know, it
was a pretty bourgeois thing to play golf. And, you know,
in a lot of areas, it still is that way,
even though it's really been democratized in the past, like,
especially 20 years, I think. But the rise of the
(28:44):
industrial middle class in England was looking for stuff to
do for fun like this, and they played golf. It
was a good way to get out and enjoy nature
and to do something to keep your body moving.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
The Industrial Revolution had taken hold and changed things enough
that the urban centers became like where people moved and lived.
And so golf was a really great way to get
out there, like you said, back to nature. People needed
it quite badly by then. And then the other thing
that happened thanks to the Industrial Revolution was the railroad
made it a lot easier to get further out into
the county, into the shires, as they call them.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Yeah, for sure. So all of a sudden you had access.
It gets you out into nature. That's still one of
the things I love about it the best is even
though there are frustrations, like those leave me very quickly.
I don't like get mad and stay mad. I get
mad for a second or two. And then you're out
there with your friends and you're walking around in this.
(29:40):
sun for four hours and not looking at your phone. And,
you know, it's great.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Not muttering to yourself.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
I mutter a little bit, but no one likes playing
with someone who just gets mad. No. All the time.
That's just that's no fun.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
That's a great personality trait to be able to let
it go. Let it go. I try. Let's take a
break and come back and talk about the USA.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
All right, let's do it. All right. So we promised
(30:31):
talk of the United States. Golf in the U.S. goes
back a pretty long way, actually. In the 17th century,
when the American colonies were being populated from places like
Scotland and the Netherlands, which we brought up, they were like,
we want to play golf over here. Looks pretty good
to me. And people started playing in 1659. I think
(30:52):
that was verified that people were playing golf in Fort Orange,
New York, modern day Albany. And I guess that sort
of short style golf game. Right.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
In the streets.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
It's a four kid. The actually I think the Dutch
colonial government in what would probably be what like New
Amsterdam or something like that at the time. They were like,
you can't play the short golf stuff. Again, the windows
are really costly here. They're a high-end luxury. So let's
(31:27):
not break them with your golf balls anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
So it was sort of playing out the same way
in the U.S. as it did in Scotland early on.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
In 1743, there was a Scottish native that was 21
years old. Also, he was a slave trader. His name
was David Dees. And he had his gear shipped to
him in Charleston, South Carolina. And in 1841, the South
Carolina Golf Club established Harrelston Green in Charleston Park, which
(31:55):
I think is the first American golf club. And very disappointingly,
the caddies there were enslaved people.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Right. And it was I looked it up, the Harrelston
Golf Club or Harrelston Green, I should say. Is not
there anymore. But that was the first one in the
United States ever. Right.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Yeah. The oldest continuous or continually running course, I guess,
surviving course. A lot of ways you could say that
is also St. Andrews, but not in Scotland. In Yonkers,
New York in 1888, that was founded. Canada edges us out.
I think the Royal Montreal Club was founded in 1873. Yeah.
(32:39):
But I didn't know about St. Andrews and Yonkers. I'd
love to go play that course.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
It became one of the founding members of the U.S.
Golf Association, which this story is one of my favorites
out of this whole thing.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Well, there's a guy named Charles Blair McDonald, and he
is the first person to call himself a golf architect.
He had Scottish roots, but he was from Chicago. But
he went back and studied at St. Andrews University in Scotland. So,
of course, he played golf a lot. And when he
came back to Chicago, he was like, hey, man, let's
(33:12):
get busy on turning Chicago into a world-class golf town.
And he started designing courses. And he became, yeah, a
very widely respected course architect. He was also a huge,
huge jerk. And because of his personality, he actually inadvertently
gave rise to the U.S. Golf Association. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Didn't he, like, just pitch a tantrum or something?
Speaker 2 (33:37):
He did. Two different ones. He played in two tournaments back-to-back,
placed second in both of them, and threw such a
hissy fit in both of these tournaments for placing second
that he called into question the legitimacy of the tournament.
He basically said that the players who placed first had cheated, like,
really was a sore loser. So much so that St.
(33:59):
Andrews and Yonkers and I think four other golf clubs
at the time got together and were like, we need
to come up with a set of rules that can't
be challenged or anything like that. None of this loosey-goosey
stuff because people like Charles Blair McDonald are out there.
They exist. We've seen now. So they got together to
formalize rules. Again, that became the USGA.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
And they did it because of Charles Blair McDonald and
his temper tantrums.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Wow. That's funny. Second is- Not bad, my friend.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
No, no. And especially in a golf tournament?
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, that's weird. So by 1900, there's more than a
thousand golf courses in the U.S. And then just like
in England post-World War I, things really catch on even more.
A lot has changed equipment-wise in golf over the years.
Those early golf clubs were, you know, built by hand, obviously.
(34:54):
And they were all wood. You know, they were dense hardwoods,
basically like beech or holly. The shafts were made of wood.
The club heads early on were made of wood, maybe
ash or hazel for the shafts. And they had at
this point, you know, they were playing with a club
for a shot. So it wasn't just like, all right,
you've got two clubs. Go out there and do it.
(35:15):
Like you had, you know, there's a guy named Archibald Barry,
I think was the first guy to invent a standard
set of golf irons.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
But they had, you know, they had different names for
the clubs, like the play club. was what you would
call a driver these days. A brassy would be equivalent
to a three-wood. A spoon was a five-wood. A cleek,
I saw a couple of things for cleek. I think
a cleek was like a one or two iron, which
is not a club that people really even use much anymore.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
How come?
Speaker 1 (35:43):
They're just really, really, really hard to hit.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
It's like an iron that's just almost completely flat and
has no angle to it or loft.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
No lift?
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, exactly. Okay. Uh, like I have a five iron
is the lowest iron I have. Some people have fours
and some like, you know, really good golfers might have
a two iron. But anyway, I think that's what a
cleek was, even though I saw something about a cleek putter. Uh,
they also had a baffy or a baffing spoon would
be like a seven wood and a Nick Blick would
(36:14):
be like a lofted wedge. Uh, and then all of
this was like, um, Like wood, wood, wood until you
finally started getting metal shafts. I think in the 1650s
were the first metal shafts, but they didn't really become
popular until much later on. And I think in 1930,
the Spalding Company started like numbering the irons. So they
(36:36):
got rid of like most of those words and just
use like the numbers.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Right. And then metal clubs weren't around really until the
1980s or weren't common until the 80s. That kind of
surprised me.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Well, metal woods. Right.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Before then, they were like my very first driver when
I was 13 was a wooden driver. I mean, I
had a metal shaft, steel shaft, but it was a
wooden driver. But the face of it has like a
metal plate on the front of it. Sure.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
No, I played golf. I was actually I led off
about the same time as that around age 13.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Yeah, I just mean for people listening, if they thought
like you're talking.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
No, no, no.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Like when you say they had wooden heads, they had
wooden heads, but like a metal face plate.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
And then in the 1980s, like I remember my first
driver that had like an all metal head. And I
was just like, it felt like the future.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Gotcha. So one of the reasons they had to make
harder and harder clubs was because the balls themselves got harder,
I guess. Yeah. There was something called gutta perca, which
is from a Malaysian tree. It's a kind of latex.
And this completely changed the type of ball that golfers
(37:56):
were hitting before. I don't remember if we mentioned or not,
but it was boiled goose feathers packed tightly in a
leather exterior. That was a golf ball. That was like
the standard for a while. Now, all of a sudden,
you have this natural latex. It's way harder. And it's just,
I'm guessing, breaking your club naturally. pretty easily. So that's
why they advanced in the technology of clubs. And then
(38:19):
now that the clubs and the balls were working so well,
they had to actually go back and kind of rearrange
golf courses because people were hitting it way farther than
they had been before with the other, like the slightly
jankier equipment.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, for sure. And these days, just the tech behind
golf clubs and golf balls is just you know, as
you would expect. It's like, so next level, it's kind
of funny, like how they manufacture these things now and
all like the R & D that goes into it.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Right. Yeah. I think that's a, I don't want to
say it's an issue I have with it, but there's
something that stands out to me, not just in golf,
but in life these days, everything has been optimized to
the maximum degree that it's just like, you know, here,
chase after this thing and you got enough money for this.
And This is going to make you a million times
better than you could be on your own through hard
(39:10):
work and effort or whatever. I don't know. It just
stands out to me.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah. Golf for sure is a sport that wants to
sell you every new thing under the sun to make
you better.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Yeah, I imagine. And there's a lot of new things
under the sun. You said it was a 200 plus
billion dollar industry in just the U.S. alone. I imagine
that's the case.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Yeah, it is a little annoying, though. I'm with you
on that. OK, the term caddy was originally a term
for a Scottish errand boy. And one of the errands
was like, hey, come over here and carry my golf clubs.
I don't want to do that. The balls, those feathery
balls that you were talking about were expensive and And
so a lot of times you would have what's called
(39:50):
a four caddy. And this is someone who goes up
the course a bit to find your ball and like
spot where your ball went so they can retrieve it
for you. They still have caddies on some courses today, obviously.
I've had a caddy in like three or four times
maybe in my life because I don't usually play like
those super, super great courses. But it's a it's a
fun experience. Caddies are usually like like really nice and like,
(40:15):
you know, they work for tips.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
So.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
You know, they're out there to help you play your
best game and have a good time doing it.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
I heard that the word caddy came from Mary Queen
of Scots who resided in France for a while. And
some of the French cadets would carry her clubs around.
And she lovingly referred to them as caddies. Is that
not true, Chuck?
Speaker 1 (40:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
That's not true.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Okay. In 19th century England, a lot of times these
were teenagers doing this kind of thing or maybe a
working class adult who couldn't go work at the factory
or something. You might work as a caddy. Apparently they
weren't treated super great back then. I did mention that
enslaved people were used in like early in the United
States as caddies. There were even reformers who were like
(41:05):
Trying to do work to get caddies to be treated better. Yeah.
And I love that Livia says provide them with shelter
on the course. She didn't use the word shack.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
No, she didn't.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Just sitting there like staring at her. Yeah. It's pretty funny.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
I wrote caddy shack.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Well, Livia also said, by the way, guys, I know
nothing about golf. So if I got anything wrong, take
it easy on me.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
As far as I can tell, she did a great job.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
No, she did a really good job.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
And then pros, too, the idea of having a pro
on staff and then not just a golf pro who's
there to like teach you how to play, to tell
you what clubs you need, that kind of stuff. But
also basically people who maintain equipment, groundkeepers, they all started
to come around in England. And then if you were
(41:51):
a member of like a really good club, you probably
had like a famous player who was the pro. Yeah.
And then. if you were not a member of a
really great club, there was probably still a really good
Scottish golf player because Scottish players were like the gold standard.
I think if you belong to a club that had
like a non-Scottish pro or a non-famous pro, you probably
(42:14):
rethought where you sent your membership dues.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, that tradition continues today
with like, you know, every I don't know about every club,
but I think most golf clubs have a pro on
staff still today for various uses. I think it's a
good way to earn a living. I imagine most of
those people wanted to go out and play professionally on tour.
But I'm sure it's a great sort of gig to
(42:40):
fall back on.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
For sure. So golf fever really started off in the
late 19th century. Like when magazines dedicated to golf started.
And then also one of the other indicators that golf
is just like this mass phenomenon is that it starts
showing up in other publications that had nothing to do
with golf. Right? Just like today. There was like mention
(43:04):
of golf. There was an article on golf or this
golfer or something like that. And I found probably one
of the most niche websites I've ever been on. It
dealt in antique golf magazines. cartoons from the 19th century
from magazines like punch. Um, did you see some of this?
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Oh yeah. The, my favorite one was, uh, you know,
one of the biggest no-nos you can do when you
go to swing a club is to like lift your
head up.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Oh yeah. I like that one too.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Guaranteed bad result. Like keep your head down, keep your
head down. And there's been all sorts of various devices
over the years. Like literally a thing you hang around
your neck and attached to your crotch to like keep
you from lifting up. But there's one of those antique
cartoons had a guy with a, You know, a five
foot long beard that he was standing on to keep
him from lifting his head. I thought that was funny.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
There's devices you attach to your crotch to keep your
head down while you swing. Does it like shock you
or something if you lift your head? Well, no.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
If you lift your head up, it just pulls up,
you know, and I guess pulls up at your crotch. Like,
I don't think people use these. I remember seeing that
like 20 something years ago. Okay. It may have been
more of a novelty, but I do remember that existed.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
It was by the company that make those hard hats
that hold beers and the straws come out of them?
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Yeah, probably so.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
So one of the things that golf was long known
for was it was an elite white male sport or
recreation or pastime. And then slowly but surely over the years—
The gates open more and more and more to women,
to African-Americans in the United States. And in the meantime, though,
(44:42):
before those those gates open groups like women and like African-Americans,
they just were like, we like golf, too. We're going
to go do our own thing. So you had like
the LPGA that was formed in 1950. Yeah. The Chicago
Women's Golf Club, which was all African-American women, they formed
(45:03):
their club in 1937. And then the impression I have
is that the United Golfers Association, the African-American Men's Association,
was like the premier golf association starting back in 1925,
I think. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
I mean— You know, it's definitely a game and a
sport where there is still this old sort of country
club set that is still very white male oriented. Like
no one is denying that. There's a country club sort
of near my house and I have some friends that
are members that I get to play at sometimes. And
(45:40):
they're a pretty like progressive model, but they still have
like the men's lounge at, you know, the club that's got,
you know, the pool table and the darts and the
buffet and the bar and the cigars. And, you know,
the women there, they play golf, but they don't have
their own lounge.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
So that kind of stuff is definitely still out there.
There are clubs that have just recently like allowed women
to be members or African-Americans or people from other ethnicities
to be members. So that's something that that sucks. But
it's changing. And I think golf is as democratized as
it's ever been right now. Um, especially like you go
(46:19):
out in Atlanta, uh, which is very African-American town and
you go out to public courses and, you know, these
are where I'm playing and the driving range, like right
near my house. And like, I'm, I'm a minority in
a lot of cases and it's, it's great to see.
I love that the game is being spread around to
more and more people. Uh, one of the fun segments
on the show I'm going to do is I got
these little, you know, the little microphones that you see
(46:41):
for Instagrammers and I'm going to go out to the
range and like talk to people and stuff. And, uh,
you know, that's going to be one of the segments. So.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
It's changed a lot over the years for the better,
I think. And people are I see guys with their
girlfriends out there a lot now, which seems something I'd
never used to see that it's becoming like a coupled
sport more than ever, which is awesome.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
I've noticed that, too.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Yeah, it's cool. I love it.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
So I think this is high time that you tell
everybody the name of your podcast again and when they
can get it and where they can get it, Chuck. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
Thanks, dude. In fact, I'm going to do this in
lieu of listener mail since we're running long. But, you know.
Once again, the show is with myself and Adam Pranica.
Adam's going to be on the cruise, by the way.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Yeah, he is.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
He's my plus one. So we're going to have a
good time. The three of us are. And along with
Ben is coming instead of Jerry now. We should probably
announce that.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Yes, it's going to be fun.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
I know we told everyone Jerry was coming, but she
can't come now.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
You're going to meet producer Ben, who may or may
not actually be Jerry.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
That's right. Yeah, once again, it's called Three Putt Bogey.
And it's already out. It's live, everybody. It was released
once again this past Friday, September 25th. So give it
a listen. I appreciate your support and appreciate your support, Josh,
for allowing me to do another solo record.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
I don't have any say in it whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Well, not allowing, being encouraging of it. Yeah, that's what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Encouraging makes more sense. Yes, I am very encouraging. Go
knock them out of the park.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Is that a golf metaphor?
Speaker 1 (48:17):
It absolutely is. A home run. And I look forward
to End of the World Part 2.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Oh, thanks, man. Someday. Someday.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
You think so?
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Something like it. Probably. Eventually. I'm not sure what, but
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Yeah, we'll see how it goes. And I'll let you
know how taxing it is on me to do a
second show again.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Right. You're just going to be like, not worth it.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
No, I'm sure it's going to be fun. And plus,
I mean, you'll have a great excuse to golf, golf, golf.
And I imagine expense it or at least write it off.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
You know what? I can't do that. I actually checked
with my accountant.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Why can't you? That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Well, it's funny because I was like, that wasn't the
reason I started it. But I was like, hey, man,
that'd be great if I could like write off stuff.
She actually has my accountant has a golf influencer and
someone else on her roster. So like she really knows
about this.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
OK.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
She was like, your dreams of writing off golf rounds
and equipment are not going to happen. She said, but
if you travel for a golf trip that is part
of the show, which is going to be part of
the show when Adam and I do our golf trips,
we're going to like talk about them and bring microphones
and stuff. She said, you can probably write off the travel.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
Oh, that's good.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
So like plane tickets and hotel, maybe.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
Okay. That's something.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
It's big stuff. I'll let everyone know how the write-offs
are going.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Yeah. And I'll let everyone know that you went to prison.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Well, that's Chuck and Adam's podcast that's coming out. So
keep an ear out for it. It's going to be great.
And in the meantime, you can always email us here
at Stuff You Should Know at stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts
are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too. And in this episode, we'll
get to hear Chuck do a Scottish accent a lot. Wow.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I haven't really thought about that. I do love that
Libby helped us with this, how she titled it. Um,
which I think I'm titling it something like that. But
she titled it Golf, colon, Spoiling Good Walks Since 1457.
Have you ever heard that phrase?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, that was Samuel Clements.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, how to spoil a good walk or whatever, something
like that.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
It's pretty funny. They get it. Golf is hard.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I have a question for you. Are you into golf
at all?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
You're being coy. I have been playing golf since I
was 13, but I took, like, 25 years off uh
from like kind of post-college to when i moved back
to atlanta um played maybe once or twice a year
during that time but then have gotten uh really started
playing again in 2020 uh during covid and but still
(01:14):
very casually but then like six months ago started really
getting into it again and like trying to get better
for the first time yeah how's it going I mean,
it's very hard. Emily asked me why I love golf
so much, and that's why, because golf is really, really hard.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
And so when you do it well, it feels like
you've achieved something.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
And so that's what I love about it. It's really, really, really,
really hard, and I like trying things sometimes that are really,
really hard.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
You know what they call that? The love of the game.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah. That's right. And you were kind enough to let
me make this announcement now as I'm dipping my toe
back into the podcast world. You know, I haven't done
anything like that since Movie Crush went away. And friend
of the show and friend of ours in real life,
Adam Pranica of The Greatest Generation. Adam is a golfer
(02:08):
and we play golf together and we text about it
all the time. I was like, we should do a
golf podcast, like a fun and funny one. And try
and build like a community around it because most golf
podcasts are like kind of serious or instructional.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Right.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
And I said, there's not a lot of shows out
there for guys like us that are like not great
at it. Like average golfers who just sort of the
absurdity of the sport. And Adam was in. And so
we're doing a new show.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
That's awesome. I predict you guys will make a great pair.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I hope so. Yeah, it's called three putt bogey. And
we think that's kind of a fun and funny name that,
you know, that's kind of one of the worst things
that can happen on a golf course. That means you
have like on a par three, for example, you've hit
a great tee shot onto the green. You got a
shot at birdie, but you put it three times instead
for a bogey. So that really kind of sums up
where we are in our game. And I think it's
(02:59):
very relatable. And it's out now. It released on, I think,
episode one was Friday, September 25th. So you can go
out and listen to it right now wherever you get
your podcasts. And also follow us on socials, 3 Putt
Bogey Podcast on Instagram. We're going to have lots of
fun content on there.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Wow, that's a great name.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Thanks. Well, I mean, we hope it gets across like
what it is, which is, again, average guys having a
good time. What we're hoping to do is build a
community of, like, support. Because, like I said, it's a
hard game and, like, you know. The worst thing you
can do is go and play golf with people that
are like really want to beat you or like want
to gamble at golf and stuff. Like that's not my deal.
(03:39):
Adam and I are both kind of like cheerleaders when
we play with each other and with friends.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Do you dress like cheerleaders when you play?
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Well, sometimes on Fridays.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
That's cool. I think that's definitely the better way to
go is to do that rather than be like you
remember that one. Character on the pit who was hospitalized
because he did too much cocaine and drank too much
and blacked out and tried to kill somebody.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah, the golfer. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
That's who I think of when you're describing the type
of golfer you just did. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
I mean, that's not me. Like, if you want to
go out there and play for money and really compete
against your friends, that's great if that's your deal. But
we're trying to build a show that's fun and encouraging,
and I hope people give it a shot.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah. So maybe leave your fleece vest at the door
when you listen to your podcast. That's right.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
But all this to say, we are about to start
an episode here in three, two, one about the history
of golf, because I think it's fairly interesting. It is.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
One of the things I found quite interesting about it
is that it has not only some unclear origins. There's
a lot of people who just kind of say whatever
they want about the history of golf and it gets
spread around. It's like, yep, that's the history. And thankfully
we have great writers and researchers like Livia to be like, actually,
(05:02):
that's not true at all, which is one of my
favorite things to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
And I think some of the confusion comes in because
like many, many ancient places had games that involved hitting
a ball with a stick and Yeah. Sometimes into a hole.
So I think it's very easy for someone to say like, hey,
in ancient Rome, they had a game called Paganica. And
(05:27):
that was that was the first golf or someone might say, yeah, no.
In China, they had a game called Chui Wan or
hit ball and they had rules like golf. And so
it was kind of like golf. But I think we
can mostly agree that like golf, as we know, it started,
of course, in Scotland.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah, and one of the stories goes that it was
bored Scottish shepherds who were like, let me use my
shepherd's hook to bat some rocks toward a hole in
the ground. That's probably not correct either. What they think,
at the very least what Livia thinks, is that— The
(06:06):
word golf, at least, if not golf itself, can actually
be found in Holland. And this isn't where, like, golf
comes from. I'm not trying to rewrite history here or
shake the boat. Everybody knows that, yes, like you said,
golf came from Scotland. But it's possible that the inspiration
for golf in Scotland came from there. At the very least,
it's almost certain that the word golf came from the Dutch.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
That's right. Except it was C-O-L-F. That was a game
that at least that word was recorded in 1297 that
did involve hitting balls into holes. It was probably a
little more like cricket. But golf had other spellings throughout
the years. G-O-U-F-F.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
G-O-I-F-F.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
G-O-I-F-F. G-O-W-F-F. G-O-L-P-H.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Golf.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
That's right. You've seen Caddyshack, right? I know you're not
into golf, but have you seen that movie?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Yeah, I have. I'm more of a Happy Gilmore fan,
meaning it's one of my favorite movies. But Happy Gilmore 2? No, sir.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Oh, I didn't know there was a second one.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Oh, just wipe it from your memory that there is
a second Happy Gilmore.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
All right. Will Ferrell has that new show too.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
What new show? A golf show?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah. It's called Hawk.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I had no idea golf was so popular.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
It's super popular right now.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I'm just kidding. Okay.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Well, I didn't know if you knew because it's kind
of come and gone as far as like, I think
it's like peak popularity.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Oh, really? I actually didn't know that. I didn't know
it had ever gone. I thought it was always generally
widely and wildly popular.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah. I mean, it's always been pretty popular. I mean,
I've got some stats for you if you want.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, lay them on me.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Golf is 48 million Americans participate.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
There's only 50. It is.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
A.
Guess how much just United States annual economic effect golf
has in the United States.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
I mean, obviously, I'm going to say it's in the billions,
but I have no guess between.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
$ 226 billion.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
That is not what I was going to guess.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Responsible for 1.65 million jobs. Wow. $ 80 billion in wages
in the U.S. And this is because, you know, golf
gets a bad rap because it's sort of an environmental
nightmare in a lot of ways. Yeah. So I'm trying
to highlight some of the good things. Sure. But golf,
$ 4. 6 billion annual in charitable contributions generated through golf, which
(08:30):
is more than all other pro sports combined. Oh, wow.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
That's a great one, too. Nice work.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Which is pretty good. But jumping back to Caddyshack, I
mentioned that because there's that one great line from Ted
Knight when he's talking about the history of golf. He says,
but it was golf without the L.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I don't remember that one.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
The thing I remember is, of course, the baby Ruth
in the bottom of the pool.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Right. Of course.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
So, yeah. So we've got at least the word golf
from the Dutch. But golf, as we spell it today, G-O-L-F,
that was around the mid-1400s. And this is when people, well,
maybe not the mid-1400s, at least within the next hundred years,
(09:15):
People started golfing in Scotland, doing what we would recognize
as golf today. Like I have this stick or whatever,
and I have another one to do, to like drive with.
I have one to putt with essentially. I'm hitting a
ball and I'm trying to get it into a hole
and the hole's way over there. So like what you could,
(09:35):
if as a golfer, Chuck, you could show up in
16th century Scotland and be like, let's play. And you
guys would generally be able to work it out.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah. Um, the earliest golf was sort of an urban version,
like where you played in the streets of the town. Uh,
they called that short golf. Um, but that was obviously
not the same as what they called long golf, which
was out in the pasture or a field. And we'll
talk about that evolution a little bit more. But, you know,
we know for sure golf was a thing then because
(10:07):
in 1457, there was an act of parliament in Scotland
signed by King James II that outlawed golf and football
because he said there were pointless sports and you should
be practicing like archery or something instead. And then there
were also complaints about people playing golf instead of going
to church. And that's where I found this kind of
(10:27):
fun little thing called Sunday sticks, which was a sneaky
way to get some golf in. Apparently they would flip
over a golf club and hold it as a cane.
So you're holding like the head of the golf club
and walk around, pretend like as if you needed a cane.
And then you flip that thing over and you can
just play a quick hole of golf with it, I guess.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Wow. Man, you really have to love golf to try
to deceive your entire town.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah, and your Lord and Savior.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Exactly. Jesus is like, I see you for what you are.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
That's right. And quit using my name in vain out
there on the course.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Right. So that prohibition on golf from 1457, from King
James II, it apparently didn't take because in 1471 and 1491—
The Scottish Parliament said, like, stop playing golf. You're not
allowed to play golf. And it's probable that the golf
(11:24):
that they were referring to was short golf. Yeah. Which
is I don't I didn't catch how how much in
depth you went with short golf. Did you just mention it? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Just that, you know, they played it sort of in
town on the streets of like the village.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
That was a problem in and of itself because, you know,
you had glass windows and, you know, village people walking around.
So you don't want to hit them. But they were
probably banning short golf. Instead, if you were, say, aristocracy
and not like a working class person or a peasant
or something like that, you were like, OK, just ban
short golf. I'm going to play this new form called
(12:03):
long golf and I'm going to go play it in
the pasture lands.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
That's right. Or a golfing ground. Or a lynx. And
that's where, you know, that's where that name first comes from.
Mainly around Scotland's east coast at the time. This is where,
you know, they weren't building a lot of buildings because
it was oceanside. It was pretty sandy. So there was,
you know, it was wide open land. Rabbits everywhere. Apparently
(12:29):
there's lore that rabbits may have, like rabbit holes were
some of the first golf holes.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Not gophers. But. You know, some of these early terms
like links like had been around since the very beginning.
And also this idea that you go out to play
like nine holes in the back end on the back nine.
Like they were saying stuff like that. And they borrowed.
I never knew this. The term fairway, which if you
don't know anything about golf, when you tee off and
(12:57):
you hit it out there and hopefully the middle of
that green expanse that the middle of that green expanse
where the grass is the shortest is the fairway. And
that term is a sailing term, meaning the easiest direction
to go, which makes a lot of sense in terms
of golf.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
For sure. So, OK, so we're in Scotland. It's the
15th century. Parliament keeps trying to ban golf. The Scottish
people say no. And then finally, in 1502, they're like, fine,
we're going to lift the ban on golf. Everybody can
play golf. And the reason why is that not coincidentally,
James IV, who is the grandson of James II, who
(13:33):
was the first one to proclaim golf illegal. He went
to Perth in Scotland, not Australia, and he found out
about golf and he fell in love with it so much.
He came home with his own set of clubs and
was like, I'm into golf now. Let's all play golf
all the time.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
That's right. There are also apparently receipts of the king
purchasing clubs in Edinburgh and St. Andrew around the same time.
So the royals are getting into it. So that means
everyone else can.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Well, not quite everyone, as we'll see. But Mary, Queen
of Scots, the granddaughter of King James IV, she ruled
from 1542 to 1567. Apparently she was into golf and
is one of the first women to just have any
sort of impact on the game at all, especially early on.
And apparently her enemies used that against her. They would
(14:23):
spread rumors that she played just a few days after
her second husband died. And that obviously was a violation
of how someone was thought to like mourn or like
how someone should mourn rather, but also like a bit
of a smear campaign that's just like it's not an
appropriate game for ladies at the time. And look at
(14:44):
what Mary Queen of Scots is doing.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Exactly. I say we come back or take a break
and then come back and possibly, if we're lucky, we'll
talk a little more about the history of golf.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Let's do it. Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Okay, Chuck. So we're back. And I think we kind
of have gotten across. It's really difficult to trace the
history of golf in any really legitimate manner and not
just make stuff up. That sounds cool. There are some
surviving documents that give us an idea of the early
contours of what golf was like. There's a textbook from
(15:45):
the 17th century, a diary from the 17th century, an
embarrassing poem from the 18th century. And a book of
golf instructions from the mid-19th century. And all of them
put together, kind of giving historians a pretty good view
on golf.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah, for sure. The poem I thought was pretty interesting.
That was in 1743 by Thomas Matheson. And it was,
you know, if you're writing a parody epic poem, and
it's called The Golf, G-O-F-F, as Ted Knight would love. And,
you know, there was a character, a goddess named Golfinia.
(16:22):
And it like that, that means it's pretty well in
the public like specter at this point.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Did you did you look that up? Oh, yeah. It's
a I mean, it is an epic poem about golf.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
There's also that diary was by a guy named Thomas Kincaid,
who is a medical student at Edinburgh University, which we toured,
I think, at least some of their some parts of it.
But he was there in 1687. And he was like,
his diary was essentially like, I'm playing golf today and
this is what I'm doing. My swing's not so great.
(16:57):
I need to improve my swing. Here's how we handicap.
Here's what clubs are made of. Like, he was just
basically leaving a document for future historians that they couldn't
have asked for more than.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, he would have started his own podcast. Had that
been around at the time. But instead, he had a diary.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Which was very cool. And then, you know, there was
an instructional book called The Golfer's Manual. by a keen hand,
and that was 1857, and that was like the first
printed book of instruction from H.B. Farney. So golf is
definitely a thing by that point. St. Andrews is recognized,
the old course that is there, as the oldest surviving
(17:36):
golf course that's still around. It's been operating since at
least 1552. That's impressive. Which is, yeah, just incredible.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
It's still around. They'll still play the Open there every year.
I'm not sure if it's like a set number of
years that they go back, but they still play it there.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
The British Open?
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah. It's called specifically the Open.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
People call it the British Open to differentiate it from
the U.S. Open, but I think the Scots are very
much like, no, it's just the Open.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
There it is.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
The Open.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Give us more, baby.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
That's all you get.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Here, I've got one for you.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
The Archbishop of St. Andrews, his name was John Hamilton,
back in 1552. This is how we know that it
was being played on at least since then. It was
probably being played on long before then because in 1552,
John Hamilton's like, fine, here's a charter. You people of St. Andrews,
my congregants, my people, you guys can play on the
(18:42):
links for, and here's where you do a John Hamilton
impression from 1552.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Golf, football, shooting, and all games.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Beautiful. That was a dead on John Hamilton.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
I don't know why my Scottish accent sounds like I'm
about to choke at any second.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
I feel like most Scottish impressions are like that. Like
think about groundskeeper Willie. He's like really worked up all
the time.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
No, that's true. And I think I'm also just doing
Mike Myers from So I Married an Axe Murderer.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah. Is that the if it's not Scottish, it's crap family?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Yeah. Hit.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Move. It was good stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, it was very good stuff. That was a fun movie.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Was it? I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, it was funny.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
I've seen all the Austin Powers movies. Does that count
for anything?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yeah, one of those is good.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
There was Fat Bastard. He was Scottish.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Boy, what an offensive character he was.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
So early on, these golfing grounds or links were, they
just used sort of what the land gave them, the
If there was a pond, that was a hazard. If
there was a big, like, hill in the middle of
the fairway, that was maybe not a hazard, but something
you had to get through.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Stationary tornado, hazard. That's right.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
But they essentially created, like, the model for what a
golf course would be and what would look like as
people started to, like, construct and build golf courses. And
also the number of holes. I think the old course
was originally 22 holes, but in 1764, they did some
consolidating and eventually ended up with 18. And they were like,
that's the standard.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah, that's the thing. That's why everybody's so into Scotland
as the origin or the cradle of golf, because not
only is that where golf really started and developed, that's
where like a lot of the terms are from, like
you said, links, A lot of the rules, a lot
of the standards, like the 18-hole golf course, they all
just kind of came from Scotland and spread from there.
(20:47):
Indisputably came from Scotland and spread from there. That's what
the beautiful thing is. We finally have made it out
of the murky past into the much clearer past for
the history of golf.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
That's right. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews,
or otherwise known as the RNA, originally was known as
Society of St. Andrews Golfers. That was founded in 1754.
By 22, quote, noblemen and gentlemen. And they, the RNA
is who basically runs the show. They took responsibility for
(21:18):
maintaining that old course, building the new course. So the
new course was 1895. That shows you how old golf is.
And they became the authority. I think in the late
19th century, the RNA became the UK's authority for the
rules of the game. And they managed the Open or
the British Open, as we call it. And then other
(21:39):
stuff like big golf events over there.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, I saw that they are– I saw someone equate
them to the Augusta National Golf Club where they're just
an authority on the game and they are– they have
such authority they can actually issue rules and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Is that– that works out? I mean, it was Bleacher Report.
They're pretty legit.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
I mean, that sounds about right. You're talking about where
they play the Masters here in Augusta, Georgia, a place
where I've never been.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Yeah. Yeah, that's the one. I'm dying to go to
the Masters, but it's really, really hard to get tickets.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yes, and I think you should do a call-out for
anyone who can get you Masters tickets to get them
to you.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah, if you want to host me at the Masters,
I mean, I can't believe I've never asked this. Please
and thank you.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Yeah, you'll bring the crackers for the pimento cheese.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
I'll bring everything.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So....
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
You are a great guest. I remember when we were
in Canada, you picked up after yourself all the time.
You pushed each chair back into the table. Like, you
were a great guest.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So, and I realize I'm being kind of jokey in
this episode. I'm not usually very jokey. But that's because
I have so little to offer in this episode that
I have to be the color commentator, I feel like.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
That's right. You're doing great.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Like, you're Vern Lundquist. And I'm Dennis Miller in this one.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
So we should talk about the 13 articles. There was
an event in 1744. It was a group known as
the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. And they created a
competition called the Silver Club. And in preparation for this,
they wrote out a document called the 13 articles. And
that was sort of the first official rule book of golf,
(23:28):
which is now like very much expanded today. As far
as the official rules of golf with like the PGA
and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I saw rule 11 was that you had to memorize
and then recite Matheson's epic poem, The Golf. Oh, wow. Yeah,
which is long.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Probably hard.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
So golf finally showed up in England in 1603. Again,
it had been being played for 150 years by then.
But Scotland and England frequently went to war. They weren't
very friendly during this period. They became much friendlier when Mary,
Queen of Scots' son, James VI of Scotland, who was
(24:07):
the Scottish ruler at the time, he inherited the English
throne and he became James I of England. And so
Scotland and England became much cozier companions. And when James
I showed up, he had his crew with him, his entourage,
court as you call it. And among his court members
were a lot– or courtiers– were a lot of people
(24:28):
who were avid golf players. And just because they had
moved to a country that had never heard of golf before,
that wasn't going to stop them from continuing to play
anytime they could.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Yeah, it sounds like he's like, these are my boys
and we like to golf.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
So go build me a course. And that's what happened.
They established a course in Blackheath near the Royal Palace
in Greenwich. And it didn't like spread far and wide though.
In fact, I think- It was like post-World War I
was when you finally got to 1,000 golf courses in
England and 200,000 golf enthusiasts. So in that interim time,
(25:10):
apparently a lot of doctors, like Scottish professionals living in England,
brought the sport over. People would go on vacation maybe
to Scotland, discover it, and come back and be like,
why aren't we playing golf in England yet? And eventually
they would get some momentum going. Someone would rent some land.
Someone would create a course, and they just started opening
(25:31):
eventually at the rate of about one golf course a
week by the 1890s in England.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yeah, but then those courses would close down very quickly
just because it was like overbuilding malls at the time.
Or in my family's experience, racquetball clubs in the 80s.
My family was on a terrible streak in the early
mid-80s where we would join a racquetball club, the whole family–
And a month later, the place would shut down and
(25:58):
there went our money. And then we'd move on to
the next one. It easily happened at least three times
to us, if not more. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
It's crazy to remember when racquetball had a grip on
the United States in the 80s. It was fast and
wild and then basically went away. You never hear about
racquetball anymore.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
No. I'm sure there's people who still play it quite
a bit.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Oh, yeah. I love racquetball. I haven't played in Since
you and I did that commercial thing.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
I forgot about that.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
It's like 14 years ago.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
That was awesome. It is great. The court sounds cool.
It's fun to watch.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
It's a great workout.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, for sure. And the bags are usually pretty awesome,
especially the early 80s racquetball bags. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
And pickleball, please. Get back to racquetball, people. That's what
I say.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Sure. Let's get back to it.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Maybe you and I should invest in a racquetball court.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Franchise?
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
We got to figure out a good name for it.
And it can't be some course reference to balls.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Right. Yeah. That's immediately what I thought.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
No, we're going to have to workshop it further, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
All right.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Speaking of workshopping, they had to workshop the number of
holes because, you know, 18 was the official number. But
most of these golf courses in England were nine hole courses.
And there's still plenty of nine hole courses out there.
But eventually they expanded to 18. And one downside to golf,
you know, early on in England was it drove up
the price of land quite a bit and also displaced
(27:28):
like cattle grazing and stuff like that and angered a
lot of farmers.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
I mean, think about that, Chuck. Like England is not big,
but this is like 19th century England just had started
the Industrial Revolution and. Like there's already land that's there's
like a land grab going on for golf courses. It's
already having an effect. Like that's how golf course crazy
England went at the time. And yeah, some of the
(27:53):
farmers push back. I think that they would drive their
cattle onto the commons to graze during golf games to
basically send the message like take it elsewhere, guy. Yeah,
that's the best I could come up with. I'm a
terrible color commentator.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Well, you just can't say what you would say, which
is filthy. That's true.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
You know me so well.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, yeah. We've done pretty good over the years avoiding
that kind of filth and flooring.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
So a lot of these courses were created by the
sort of upper class and the aristocratic class, obviously. Sometimes
it might be a local government. But, you know, it
was a pretty bourgeois thing to play golf. And, you know,
in a lot of areas, it still is that way,
even though it's really been democratized in the past, like,
especially 20 years, I think. But the rise of the
(28:44):
industrial middle class in England was looking for stuff to
do for fun like this, and they played golf. It
was a good way to get out and enjoy nature
and to do something to keep your body moving.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
The Industrial Revolution had taken hold and changed things enough
that the urban centers became like where people moved and lived.
And so golf was a really great way to get
out there, like you said, back to nature. People needed
it quite badly by then. And then the other thing
that happened thanks to the Industrial Revolution was the railroad
made it a lot easier to get further out into
the county, into the shires, as they call them.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Yeah, for sure. So all of a sudden you had access.
It gets you out into nature. That's still one of
the things I love about it the best is even
though there are frustrations, like those leave me very quickly.
I don't like get mad and stay mad. I get
mad for a second or two. And then you're out
there with your friends and you're walking around in this.
(29:40):
sun for four hours and not looking at your phone. And,
you know, it's great.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Not muttering to yourself.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
I mutter a little bit, but no one likes playing
with someone who just gets mad. No. All the time.
That's just that's no fun.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
That's a great personality trait to be able to let
it go. Let it go. I try. Let's take a
break and come back and talk about the USA.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
All right, let's do it. All right. So we promised
(30:31):
talk of the United States. Golf in the U.S. goes
back a pretty long way, actually. In the 17th century,
when the American colonies were being populated from places like
Scotland and the Netherlands, which we brought up, they were like,
we want to play golf over here. Looks pretty good
to me. And people started playing in 1659. I think
(30:52):
that was verified that people were playing golf in Fort Orange,
New York, modern day Albany. And I guess that sort
of short style golf game. Right.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
In the streets.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
It's a four kid. The actually I think the Dutch
colonial government in what would probably be what like New
Amsterdam or something like that at the time. They were like,
you can't play the short golf stuff. Again, the windows
are really costly here. They're a high-end luxury. So let's
(31:27):
not break them with your golf balls anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
So it was sort of playing out the same way
in the U.S. as it did in Scotland early on.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
In 1743, there was a Scottish native that was 21
years old. Also, he was a slave trader. His name
was David Dees. And he had his gear shipped to
him in Charleston, South Carolina. And in 1841, the South
Carolina Golf Club established Harrelston Green in Charleston Park, which
(31:55):
I think is the first American golf club. And very disappointingly,
the caddies there were enslaved people.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Right. And it was I looked it up, the Harrelston
Golf Club or Harrelston Green, I should say. Is not
there anymore. But that was the first one in the
United States ever. Right.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Yeah. The oldest continuous or continually running course, I guess,
surviving course. A lot of ways you could say that
is also St. Andrews, but not in Scotland. In Yonkers,
New York in 1888, that was founded. Canada edges us out.
I think the Royal Montreal Club was founded in 1873. Yeah.
(32:39):
But I didn't know about St. Andrews and Yonkers. I'd
love to go play that course.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
It became one of the founding members of the U.S.
Golf Association, which this story is one of my favorites
out of this whole thing.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Well, there's a guy named Charles Blair McDonald, and he
is the first person to call himself a golf architect.
He had Scottish roots, but he was from Chicago. But
he went back and studied at St. Andrews University in Scotland. So,
of course, he played golf a lot. And when he
came back to Chicago, he was like, hey, man, let's
(33:12):
get busy on turning Chicago into a world-class golf town.
And he started designing courses. And he became, yeah, a
very widely respected course architect. He was also a huge,
huge jerk. And because of his personality, he actually inadvertently
gave rise to the U.S. Golf Association. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Didn't he, like, just pitch a tantrum or something?
Speaker 2 (33:37):
He did. Two different ones. He played in two tournaments back-to-back,
placed second in both of them, and threw such a
hissy fit in both of these tournaments for placing second
that he called into question the legitimacy of the tournament.
He basically said that the players who placed first had cheated, like,
really was a sore loser. So much so that St.
(33:59):
Andrews and Yonkers and I think four other golf clubs
at the time got together and were like, we need
to come up with a set of rules that can't
be challenged or anything like that. None of this loosey-goosey
stuff because people like Charles Blair McDonald are out there.
They exist. We've seen now. So they got together to
formalize rules. Again, that became the USGA.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
And they did it because of Charles Blair McDonald and
his temper tantrums.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Wow. That's funny. Second is- Not bad, my friend.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
No, no. And especially in a golf tournament?
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, that's weird. So by 1900, there's more than a
thousand golf courses in the U.S. And then just like
in England post-World War I, things really catch on even more.
A lot has changed equipment-wise in golf over the years.
Those early golf clubs were, you know, built by hand, obviously.
(34:54):
And they were all wood. You know, they were dense hardwoods,
basically like beech or holly. The shafts were made of wood.
The club heads early on were made of wood, maybe
ash or hazel for the shafts. And they had at
this point, you know, they were playing with a club
for a shot. So it wasn't just like, all right,
you've got two clubs. Go out there and do it.
(35:15):
Like you had, you know, there's a guy named Archibald Barry,
I think was the first guy to invent a standard
set of golf irons.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
But they had, you know, they had different names for
the clubs, like the play club. was what you would
call a driver these days. A brassy would be equivalent
to a three-wood. A spoon was a five-wood. A cleek,
I saw a couple of things for cleek. I think
a cleek was like a one or two iron, which
is not a club that people really even use much anymore.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
How come?
Speaker 1 (35:43):
They're just really, really, really hard to hit.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
It's like an iron that's just almost completely flat and
has no angle to it or loft.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
No lift?
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, exactly. Okay. Uh, like I have a five iron
is the lowest iron I have. Some people have fours
and some like, you know, really good golfers might have
a two iron. But anyway, I think that's what a
cleek was, even though I saw something about a cleek putter. Uh,
they also had a baffy or a baffing spoon would
be like a seven wood and a Nick Blick would
(36:14):
be like a lofted wedge. Uh, and then all of
this was like, um, Like wood, wood, wood until you
finally started getting metal shafts. I think in the 1650s
were the first metal shafts, but they didn't really become
popular until much later on. And I think in 1930,
the Spalding Company started like numbering the irons. So they
(36:36):
got rid of like most of those words and just
use like the numbers.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Right. And then metal clubs weren't around really until the
1980s or weren't common until the 80s. That kind of
surprised me.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Well, metal woods. Right.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Before then, they were like my very first driver when
I was 13 was a wooden driver. I mean, I
had a metal shaft, steel shaft, but it was a
wooden driver. But the face of it has like a
metal plate on the front of it. Sure.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
No, I played golf. I was actually I led off
about the same time as that around age 13.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Yeah, I just mean for people listening, if they thought
like you're talking.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
No, no, no.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Like when you say they had wooden heads, they had
wooden heads, but like a metal face plate.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
And then in the 1980s, like I remember my first
driver that had like an all metal head. And I
was just like, it felt like the future.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Gotcha. So one of the reasons they had to make
harder and harder clubs was because the balls themselves got harder,
I guess. Yeah. There was something called gutta perca, which
is from a Malaysian tree. It's a kind of latex.
And this completely changed the type of ball that golfers
(37:56):
were hitting before. I don't remember if we mentioned or not,
but it was boiled goose feathers packed tightly in a
leather exterior. That was a golf ball. That was like
the standard for a while. Now, all of a sudden,
you have this natural latex. It's way harder. And it's just,
I'm guessing, breaking your club naturally. pretty easily. So that's
why they advanced in the technology of clubs. And then
(38:19):
now that the clubs and the balls were working so well,
they had to actually go back and kind of rearrange
golf courses because people were hitting it way farther than
they had been before with the other, like the slightly
jankier equipment.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, for sure. And these days, just the tech behind
golf clubs and golf balls is just you know, as
you would expect. It's like, so next level, it's kind
of funny, like how they manufacture these things now and
all like the R & D that goes into it.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Right. Yeah. I think that's a, I don't want to
say it's an issue I have with it, but there's
something that stands out to me, not just in golf,
but in life these days, everything has been optimized to
the maximum degree that it's just like, you know, here,
chase after this thing and you got enough money for this.
And This is going to make you a million times
better than you could be on your own through hard
(39:10):
work and effort or whatever. I don't know. It just
stands out to me.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah. Golf for sure is a sport that wants to
sell you every new thing under the sun to make
you better.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Yeah, I imagine. And there's a lot of new things
under the sun. You said it was a 200 plus
billion dollar industry in just the U.S. alone. I imagine
that's the case.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Yeah, it is a little annoying, though. I'm with you
on that. OK, the term caddy was originally a term
for a Scottish errand boy. And one of the errands
was like, hey, come over here and carry my golf clubs.
I don't want to do that. The balls, those feathery
balls that you were talking about were expensive and And
so a lot of times you would have what's called
(39:50):
a four caddy. And this is someone who goes up
the course a bit to find your ball and like
spot where your ball went so they can retrieve it
for you. They still have caddies on some courses today, obviously.
I've had a caddy in like three or four times
maybe in my life because I don't usually play like
those super, super great courses. But it's a it's a
fun experience. Caddies are usually like like really nice and like,
(40:15):
you know, they work for tips.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
So.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
You know, they're out there to help you play your
best game and have a good time doing it.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
I heard that the word caddy came from Mary Queen
of Scots who resided in France for a while. And
some of the French cadets would carry her clubs around.
And she lovingly referred to them as caddies. Is that
not true, Chuck?
Speaker 1 (40:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
That's not true.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Okay. In 19th century England, a lot of times these
were teenagers doing this kind of thing or maybe a
working class adult who couldn't go work at the factory
or something. You might work as a caddy. Apparently they
weren't treated super great back then. I did mention that
enslaved people were used in like early in the United
States as caddies. There were even reformers who were like
(41:05):
Trying to do work to get caddies to be treated better. Yeah.
And I love that Livia says provide them with shelter
on the course. She didn't use the word shack.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
No, she didn't.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Just sitting there like staring at her. Yeah. It's pretty funny.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
I wrote caddy shack.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Well, Livia also said, by the way, guys, I know
nothing about golf. So if I got anything wrong, take
it easy on me.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
As far as I can tell, she did a great job.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
No, she did a really good job.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
And then pros, too, the idea of having a pro
on staff and then not just a golf pro who's
there to like teach you how to play, to tell
you what clubs you need, that kind of stuff. But
also basically people who maintain equipment, groundkeepers, they all started
to come around in England. And then if you were
(41:51):
a member of like a really good club, you probably
had like a famous player who was the pro. Yeah.
And then. if you were not a member of a
really great club, there was probably still a really good
Scottish golf player because Scottish players were like the gold standard.
I think if you belong to a club that had
like a non-Scottish pro or a non-famous pro, you probably
(42:14):
rethought where you sent your membership dues.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, that tradition continues today
with like, you know, every I don't know about every club,
but I think most golf clubs have a pro on
staff still today for various uses. I think it's a
good way to earn a living. I imagine most of
those people wanted to go out and play professionally on tour.
But I'm sure it's a great sort of gig to
(42:40):
fall back on.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
For sure. So golf fever really started off in the
late 19th century. Like when magazines dedicated to golf started.
And then also one of the other indicators that golf
is just like this mass phenomenon is that it starts
showing up in other publications that had nothing to do
with golf. Right? Just like today. There was like mention
(43:04):
of golf. There was an article on golf or this
golfer or something like that. And I found probably one
of the most niche websites I've ever been on. It
dealt in antique golf magazines. cartoons from the 19th century
from magazines like punch. Um, did you see some of this?
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Oh yeah. The, my favorite one was, uh, you know,
one of the biggest no-nos you can do when you
go to swing a club is to like lift your
head up.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Oh yeah. I like that one too.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Guaranteed bad result. Like keep your head down, keep your
head down. And there's been all sorts of various devices
over the years. Like literally a thing you hang around
your neck and attached to your crotch to like keep
you from lifting up. But there's one of those antique
cartoons had a guy with a, You know, a five
foot long beard that he was standing on to keep
him from lifting his head. I thought that was funny.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
There's devices you attach to your crotch to keep your
head down while you swing. Does it like shock you
or something if you lift your head? Well, no.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
If you lift your head up, it just pulls up,
you know, and I guess pulls up at your crotch. Like,
I don't think people use these. I remember seeing that
like 20 something years ago. Okay. It may have been
more of a novelty, but I do remember that existed.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
It was by the company that make those hard hats
that hold beers and the straws come out of them?
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Yeah, probably so.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
So one of the things that golf was long known
for was it was an elite white male sport or
recreation or pastime. And then slowly but surely over the years—
The gates open more and more and more to women,
to African-Americans in the United States. And in the meantime, though,
(44:42):
before those those gates open groups like women and like African-Americans,
they just were like, we like golf, too. We're going
to go do our own thing. So you had like
the LPGA that was formed in 1950. Yeah. The Chicago
Women's Golf Club, which was all African-American women, they formed
(45:03):
their club in 1937. And then the impression I have
is that the United Golfers Association, the African-American Men's Association,
was like the premier golf association starting back in 1925,
I think. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
I mean— You know, it's definitely a game and a
sport where there is still this old sort of country
club set that is still very white male oriented. Like
no one is denying that. There's a country club sort
of near my house and I have some friends that
are members that I get to play at sometimes. And
(45:40):
they're a pretty like progressive model, but they still have
like the men's lounge at, you know, the club that's got,
you know, the pool table and the darts and the
buffet and the bar and the cigars. And, you know,
the women there, they play golf, but they don't have
their own lounge.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
So that kind of stuff is definitely still out there.
There are clubs that have just recently like allowed women
to be members or African-Americans or people from other ethnicities
to be members. So that's something that that sucks. But
it's changing. And I think golf is as democratized as
it's ever been right now. Um, especially like you go
(46:19):
out in Atlanta, uh, which is very African-American town and
you go out to public courses and, you know, these
are where I'm playing and the driving range, like right
near my house. And like, I'm, I'm a minority in
a lot of cases and it's, it's great to see.
I love that the game is being spread around to
more and more people. Uh, one of the fun segments
on the show I'm going to do is I got
these little, you know, the little microphones that you see
(46:41):
for Instagrammers and I'm going to go out to the
range and like talk to people and stuff. And, uh,
you know, that's going to be one of the segments. So.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
It's changed a lot over the years for the better,
I think. And people are I see guys with their
girlfriends out there a lot now, which seems something I'd
never used to see that it's becoming like a coupled
sport more than ever, which is awesome.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
I've noticed that, too.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Yeah, it's cool. I love it.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
So I think this is high time that you tell
everybody the name of your podcast again and when they
can get it and where they can get it, Chuck. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
Thanks, dude. In fact, I'm going to do this in
lieu of listener mail since we're running long. But, you know.
Once again, the show is with myself and Adam Pranica.
Adam's going to be on the cruise, by the way.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Yeah, he is.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
He's my plus one. So we're going to have a
good time. The three of us are. And along with
Ben is coming instead of Jerry now. We should probably
announce that.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Yes, it's going to be fun.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
I know we told everyone Jerry was coming, but she
can't come now.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
You're going to meet producer Ben, who may or may
not actually be Jerry.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
That's right. Yeah, once again, it's called Three Putt Bogey.
And it's already out. It's live, everybody. It was released
once again this past Friday, September 25th. So give it
a listen. I appreciate your support and appreciate your support, Josh,
for allowing me to do another solo record.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
I don't have any say in it whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Well, not allowing, being encouraging of it. Yeah, that's what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Encouraging makes more sense. Yes, I am very encouraging. Go
knock them out of the park.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Is that a golf metaphor?
Speaker 1 (48:17):
It absolutely is. A home run. And I look forward
to End of the World Part 2.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Oh, thanks, man. Someday. Someday.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
You think so?
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Something like it. Probably. Eventually. I'm not sure what, but
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Yeah, we'll see how it goes. And I'll let you
know how taxing it is on me to do a
second show again.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Right. You're just going to be like, not worth it.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
No, I'm sure it's going to be fun. And plus,
I mean, you'll have a great excuse to golf, golf, golf.
And I imagine expense it or at least write it off.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
You know what? I can't do that. I actually checked
with my accountant.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Why can't you? That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Well, it's funny because I was like, that wasn't the
reason I started it. But I was like, hey, man,
that'd be great if I could like write off stuff.
She actually has my accountant has a golf influencer and
someone else on her roster. So like she really knows
about this.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
OK.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
She was like, your dreams of writing off golf rounds
and equipment are not going to happen. She said, but
if you travel for a golf trip that is part
of the show, which is going to be part of
the show when Adam and I do our golf trips,
we're going to like talk about them and bring microphones
and stuff. She said, you can probably write off the travel.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
Oh, that's good.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
So like plane tickets and hotel, maybe.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
Okay. That's something.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
It's big stuff. I'll let everyone know how the write-offs
are going.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Yeah. And I'll let everyone know that you went to prison.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Well, that's Chuck and Adam's podcast that's coming out. So
keep an ear out for it. It's going to be great.
And in the meantime, you can always email us here
at Stuff You Should Know at stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts
are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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