Links to Explore
Ancient Golf
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This site is maintained by Geert and Sara Nijs, independent sports historians from the Netherlands. It focuses on ancient “stick and ball” games, the predecessors of golf.
There are headings for colf/kolf, jeu de crosse (choule), jeu de mail (pall mall) and their relation to the Scottish game of golf. The couple, according to information on the site, is fluent in several languages, which gives them a distinct advantage when researching libraries, archives and museums in various countries for information on the old games.
The Nijs are members of the European Association of Golf Historians and Collectors (EAGHC), the British Golf Collectors Society (BGCS), the Association Patrimoniale du Golf Français (APGF) and supporters of the Early Golf Foundation. They have published “Choule – The Non-Royal but most Ancient Game of Crosse”, which is an in-depth description of the past and present of the ancient game of crosse (choule); and “Games for Kings & Commoners”, in which they explain, question and sometimes disagree with what has been taken for granted for so long: was golf originally a hockey game; were British kings hooked on golf or on pall mall: were the Belgian crosseurs the inventors of ‘dimpled’ balls; did golfers ever play with wooden balls; has the hole always been the unique feature of Scottish golf; have women and children ever played a role in golf, crosse, colf or mail; was colf an indoor game; was a small Netherlandish village the main production centre for Scottish golf balls?
I found the site a bit difficult to navigate, with a couple of balky links to separate pages, but this minor flaw is more than made up in the photos, updates and published notes and research.
The website publishes blogs, notes and comments from authors and other researchers and various other previously published articles on ancient stick and ball games. “Ancient Golf” is well worth a look for those of you who are interested in the distant ancestors of our favorite sport.
Send your favorite links to: jdavis2364@gmail.com. We’ll share them through the newsletter and on the SoHG website under “Resources.”