Golf History, Majors, Professional Players Tours

Professional Golf
Golf is played professionally in many different countries. The majority of professional golfers work as club or teaching professionals, and only compete in local competitions. A small elite of professional golfers are "tournament pros" who compete full time on international "tours".

Golf Tours
Tiger Woods, who is currently the leading professional golfer in the World.Main article: Professional golf tours There are at least twenty professional golf tours, each run by a PGA or an independent tour organisation, which is responsible for arranging events, finding sponsors, and regulating the tour. Typically a tour has "members" who are entitled to compete in all of its events, and also invites non-members to compete in some of them. Gaining membership of an elite tour is highly competitive, and most professional golfers never achieve it.The most widely known tour is the PGA TOUR (officially rendered in all caps), which attracts the best golfers from all the other men's tours. This is due mostly to the fact that most PGA TOUR events have a first prize of at least USD 800,000. PGA TOUR wins can mean endorsement deals, automatically provide the winner a minimum two-year exemption to play in other tournaments, and supply the prestige earned by beating the best of the best. The PGA European Tour, which attracts a substantial number of top golfers from outside North America, ranks only slightly below the PGA TOUR in worldwide prestige. Some top professionals from outside North America play enough tournaments to maintain membership on both the PGA TOUR and European Tour. There are several other men's tours around the world.

The Sunshine is being played in South Africa, Asian Tour is associating with The European Tour to host European Tour level tournaments in Asia. In 2005, China started a China Tour. The Japan Tour is the 3rd biggest Tour overall, it has the best sponsors besides the PGA Tour. Golf is unique in having lucrative competition for older players. There are several senior tours for men 50 and older, the best known of which is the U.S.-based Champions Tour.

There are five principal tours for women, each based in a different country or continent. The most prestigious of these is the U.S-based LPGA Tour.

Men's major Golf championships
The major championships are the four most prestigious men's tournaments of the year. In current (2005) chronological order they are:

The Masters
U.S. Open
The Open Championship (referred to in North America as the British Open)
PGA Championship

The fields for these events include the top several dozen golfers from all over the world. The Masters has been played at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia since its inception in 1934. The U.S. Open and PGA Championship are played at various courses around the United States, while The Open Championship is played at various courses in the UK.

The number of major championships a player accumulates in his career has a very large impact on his stature in the game. Jack Nicklaus is widely regarded as the greatest golfer of all time, largely because he has won a record 18 professional majors, or 20 majors in total if his two U.S. Amateurs are included. Tiger Woods, who may be the only golfer likely to challenge Nicklaus's record, has won ten majors, all before the age of thirty. Woods also came closest to winning all four current majors in one season (known as a Grand Slam) when he won them consecutively across two seasons: the 2000 U.S. Open, Open Championship, and PGA Championship; and the 2001 Masters. This feat has been frequently called the Tiger Slam.

Prior to the advent of the PGA Championship and The Masters, the four Majors were the U.S. Open, the U.S. Amateur, the Open Championship, and the British Amateur. These are the four that Bobby Jones won in 1930 to become the only player ever to have earned a Grand Slam.

4 majors: Willie Anderson, Jim Barnes, Ray Floyd, Bobby Locke, Old Tom Morris, Young Tom Morris, Willie Park, Sr.
3 majors: Jamie Anderson, Tommy Armour, Julius Boros, Billy Casper, Henry Cotton, Jimmy Demaret, Ernie Els, Bob Ferguson, Ralph Guldahl, Hale Irwin, Cary Middlecoff, Larry Nelson, Nick Price, Denny Shute, Vijay Singh, Payne Stewart.
2 majors: Jack Burke, Jr, Ben Crenshaw, John Daly, Leo Diegel, Olin Dutra, Doug Ford, Retief Goosen, David Graham, Hubert Green, Harold Hilton, Jock Hutchison, Tony Jacklin, Lee Janzen, Sandy Lyle, Bernhard Langer, John McDermott, Bob Martin, Phil Mickelson, Johnny Miller, Greg Norman, Andy North, José María Olazábal, Mark O'Meara, Willie Park, Jr., Henry Picard, Edward Ray, Paul Runyan, Alex Smith, Horton Smith, Dave Stockton, Curtis Strange, Craig Wood, Fuzzy Zoeller.
1 major: Tommy Aaron, George Archer, Laurie Auchterlonie, William Auchterlonie, Paul Azinger, Ian Baker-Finch, John Ball, Jerry Barber, Rich Beem, Tommy Bolt, Gay Brewer, Mark Brooks, David Brown, Billy Burke, Walter Burkemo, Jack Burns, Richard Burton, Mark Calcavecchia, Michael Campbell, Bob Charles, Charles Coody, Fred Couples, Tom Creavy, Ben Curtis, Fred Daly, Roberto DeVicenzo, George Duncan, David Duval, Steve Elkington, Chick Evans, Johnny Farrell, Max Faulkner, Willie Fernie, Jim Ferrier, Dow Finsterwald, Jack Fleck, James Foulis, Ed Furgol, Jim Furyk, Al Geiberger, Vic Ghezzi, Bob Goalby, Johnny Goodman, Wayne Grady, Lou Graham, Bob Hamilton, Todd Hamilton, Chick Harbert, Claude Harmon, Chandler Harper, Arthur Havers, Jay Hebert, Lionel Hebert, Fred Herd, Sandy Herd, Don January, Steve Jones, Herman Keiser, Tom Kidd, Hugh Kirkaldy, Tom Kite, Paul Lawrie, Tom Lehman, Tony Lema, Justin Leonard, Lawson Little, Gene Littler, Joe Lloyd, Davis Love III, Willie Macfarlane, Fred McLeod, John Mahaffey, Tony Manero, Lloyd Mangrum, Dave Marr, Arnaud Massy, Dick Mayer, Shaun Micheel, Larry Mize, Orville Moody, Kel Nagle, Bobby Nichols, Francis Ouimet, Alf Padgham, Mungo Park, Sam Parks Jr., Jerry Pate, Corey Pavin, Alf Perry, Horace Rawlins, Johnny Revolta, Bill Rogers, Bob Rosburg, Alec Ross, George Sargent, Jack Simpson, Scott Simpson, Jeff Sluman, Willie Smith, Craig Stadler, Andrew Strath, Hal Sutton, David Toms, Jerome Travers, Jim Turnesa, Bob Tway, Ken Venturi, Lanny Wadkins, Cyril Walker, Art Wall, Jr., Mike Weir, Tom Weiskopf, Reg Whitcombe, Jack White, Ian Woosnam, Lew Worsham. Before the professional game acquired its modern dominance, the British Amateur and the U.S. Amateur were regarded as majors. Many people consider this usage obsolete, while others make a distinction between professional majors and total majors. In any case, if wins in these tournaments are included there are four men with ten or more major titles: Jack Nicklaus 20; Bobby Jones 13; Tiger Woods 13; Walter Hagen 11.

Women's Golf majors
Women's major golf championships. Women's golf does not have a globally agreed set of majors. The LPGA's list of majors has changed several times over the years, with the last change in 2001. Like the PGA TOUR, the LPGA currently has four majors:

Kraft Nabisco Championship
U.S. Women's Open
LPGA Championship
Women's British Open
Only the last of these is also recognised by the Ladies European Tour. In 2003 Annika Sörenstam was the first woman after fifty years who started at a men's PGA Tour.

Golf History

History
See also Timeline of golf history 1353-1850, Timeline of golf history 1851-1945, and Timeline of golf history 1945-1999. It was reported in January 2006 that recent evidence unearthed by Prof. Ling Hongling of Lanzhou University suggests that golf may have originated in China at least 500 years before it was first mentioned in Scotland. Archives called the Dongzuan Records from the Song Dynasty describe a game called chuiwan and also include drawings. It was played with 10 clubs including a cuanbang, pubang, and shaobang, which are comparable to a driver, two-wood, and three-wood. The archive also includes references to a Nan Tang Dynasty magistrate who asked his daughter to make "holes" for him to play, and describes his "tee" as being jewel-encrusted. There were further descriptions of clubs being inlaid with jade and gold, suggesting golf was for the wealthy. Hongling suggested golf may have been exported to Europe and then Scotland by Mongolian travellers in the late Middle Ages.

Golf was usually regarded as a Scottish invention, as the game was mentioned in two 15th-century laws prohibiting the playing of the game of "gowf". Some scholars, however, suggest that this refers to another game which is much akin to shinty or hurling, or to modern field hockey. They point out that a game of putting a small ball in a hole in the ground using golf clubs was played in 17th-century Netherlands. Primatively, the action of using a stick with a boxed attachment to hit stones close to a marked target, similar to that of bocce, originated in Italy. The term golf is believed to have originated from a Germanic word for "club". It has been hypothesised that golf is actually an acronym for gentlemen only; ladies forbidden, but this is believed to be an urban legend.

It is an urban legend that golf courses contain 18 holes because that was the number of shots it took to polish off a fifth of scotch. According to the USGA however, this is incorrect. The links at St. Andrews occupy a narrow strip of land along the sea. As early as the 15th century, golfers at St. Andrews established a customary route through the undulating terrain, playing to holes whose locations were dictated by topography. The course that emerged featured eleven holes, laid out end to end from the clubhouse to the far end of the property. One played the holes out, turned around, and played the holes in, for a total of 22 holes. In 1764, several of the holes were deemed too short, and were therefore combined. The number was thereby reduced from 11 to nine, so that a complete round of the links comprised 18 holes.

The oldest playing golf course in the world is The Old Links at Musselburgh. Evidence has shown that golf was played on Musselburgh Links in 1672 although Mary Queen of Scots reputedly played there in 1567. The major changes in equipment since the 19th century have been better mowers, especially for the greens, better golf ball designs, using rubber and man-made materials since about 1900, and the introduction of the metal shaft beginning in the 1930s. Also in the 1930s the wooden golf tee was invented. In the 1970s the use of metal to replace wood heads began, and shafts made of graphite composite materials were introduced in the 1980s.


Golfing countries
In 2005 Golf Digest calculated that there were nearly 32,000 golf courses in the world, approximately half of them in the United States. [9] The countries with most golf courses in relation to population, starting with the best endowed were: Scotland, New Zealand, Australia, Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Canada, Wales, United States, Sweden, and England (countries with less than 500,000 people were excluded). Apart from Sweden all of these are countries where English is the main language, but the number of courses in new golfing territories is increasing rapidly. For example the first golf course in the People's Republic of China only opened in the mid-1980s, but by 2005 there were 200 courses in that country.

The professional game was initially dominated by British golfers, but since World War I, America has produced the greatest quantity of leading professionals. Other Commonwealth countries such as Australia and South Africa are also traditional powers in the game. Since around the 1970s, Japan and various Western European countries have produced leading players on a regular basis. The number of countries with high-class professionals continues to increase steadily, especially in East Asia. South Korea is notably strong in women's golf.