In the beginning, playing fields were needed for golf, and more space — Golf

"In the beginning the golf ball was made of wood, probably of beech, but the feather ball, or featherie came into existence around 1618, marking the first ball improvement in golf. The feather ball was made in Scotland for more than 200 years until it was superseded by the gutta percha ball in 1848. It was expensive and easily damaged and the single element that dictated that the game was played in its earliest stages by the wealthier sections of the community who could afford the price of the golf balls. The task of crafting a featherie was not only arduous for the ball makers of the time, but very detrimental to their health. The ball makers lungs were filled with feather dust and the constant pressure on the chest of forcing the boiled feathers into the small leather pouch with a special crutch-handled filling rod, took its toll. Even the most experienced ball maker could only manufacture four geather balls in a day, which accounted for their price of three to four shillings, a huge sum at the time and more even than the cost of a golf club."

"Wherever they traveled Scotts took their favorite pastime with them. They set up courses and founded golf clubs. None made a more significant contribution to the mass explosion of golf in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, than two expatriate Scottish school friends from Dunfermline in Fife, John Reid and Robert Lockhart, although neither is likely to have realised it at the time. Reid is regarded as the father of American golf, as we will see later, but Lockhart had a significant part to play as well. While Reid was introducing golf to the United States, essentially for the first time, the game was spreading like wildfire in the British Isles. Scottish professionals were imported south of the border into England and to Ireland and Wales to lay out courses to meet the new demand for the game. A measure of the demand for their services is the huge increase evident in the number of golf clubs founded in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Prior to that period the majority of clubs were in Scotland. In 1864 there were about 30 golf clubs in Scotland while in england there were only three - Royal Blackheath, old Machester and Westward Ho! By 1880 there were 60 clubs in Britain; by 1890 there were 387 and by the start of the new millennium Britain had almost 2500 clubs. The Scots pioneers had done their work well."

"The first Scot who tried to influence the game to any real extent did not attempt to do so for the betterment of the game at all; in fact he went to some lengths to try to stop it altogether. Perhaps it was an early example of the Scots perversity in forbidding themselves to do what they want to do, as George Pottinger commented in his excellent account of the history of the Honourable Company, that King James II issues an infamous decree banning the game altogether in 1457. It had no effect of course, for the Scots had more interest in putting their wits against the links than in entertaining any fear of His Majestys wrath because of their refusal to practice archery for defence of the nation at a time when the King was warring on several fronts. Even the threat of being taken by the Kings officiars was not sufficient to curtail the golfing desires of the populace. Fourteen years later another Royal decree, this time by King James IIs successor, James III, commanding that fute-ball and be abused in time coming, had as little effect on the population as the first one, and when James IV tried to ban the game again twenty years later he got just as short shrift. There was at least some salvation for James IV, for he took to the game himself after signing a treaty of Perpetual Peace with England, presumably making the requirement for archery practice less pressing in the process. His Treaty may have been a victory for hope over experience before or since, but at least it gave him some breathing space after having had the sense to take to the links himself."

"According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “[T]he average American family of four uses 400 gallons of water per day.” The average golf course uses 312,000 gallons of water, according to Audobon International, meaning each one uses as much water as 780 families of four. In Palm Springs—immediately adjacent to a place called Palm Desert—NPR reported that each of the citys 57 courses use about a million gallons a day, or about the same as 2,500 families of four. Looking statewide, the numbers really get fun. California is second only to Florida in the number of golf courses it has: 921. Together, those courses use as much water as 2.8 million people, or about 7 percent of the states population. While middle-class homeowners risk fines for watering their lawns, millions upon millions of gallons of water are wasted every day on a boring leisure sport for the wealthy. “Golf courses are a huge problem,” said Adam Keats of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group. And part of that huge problem is the people who play it. “Theyre a wealthy elite that have no connection to want or lack,” Keats, head of the centers California Water Law Project, told me over the phone. “Golfers live in a world of excess.”"

"It is worth repeating that the principles of art have little or no connection to the original links of Scotland, although the latter resemble savannas whose wildly undulating terrain represents the opposite or arrangement. In fact, the first classic holes did not arise naturally from the land- but came about when greenkeepers and professionals modified it. Through logical thinking and good taste, these pioneering designers employed principles of art they had probably never heard of."

"Golf? Nuts! I never did see any fun in a game, where if I hit a ball, I had to chase it myself."