Golf

Golf Tickets and Golf Corporate Hospitality packages

VIPticketsandcorporatehospitality.co.uk Ltd provide Golf Tickets and Golf Hospitality Packages for major Golf tournaments worldwide. While the modern game of golf originated in 15th century Scotland, the ancient origins are unclear and much debated. Some historians trace the sport back to the Roman game of paganica, in which participants used a bent stick to hit a stuffed leather ball. Others cite chuiwan (“chui” means striking and “wan” means small ball) as the progenitor, a Chinese game played between the eighth and 14th centuries. Golf is thought to have been introduced into Europe during the Middle Ages.

Golf as we now know it originated in Scotland, where the first written record of golf is James II’s banning of the game in 1457, as an unwelcome distraction to learning archery. To many golfers, the Old Course at St Andrews, a links course dating to before 1574, is considered to be a site of pilgrimage. Golf is documented as being played on Musselburgh Links, East Lothian, Scotland as early as 2 March 1672, which is certified as the oldest golf course in the world by Guinness World Records. The oldest surviving rules of golf were compiled in March 1744 for the Company of Gentlemen Golfers, later renamed The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, which was played at Leith, Scotland. The world’s oldest golf tournament in existence, and very first major, is The Open Championship, which was first played on 17 October 1860 at Prestwick Golf Club, in Ayrshire, Scotland. Professional golf tournaments are now played in a great array of locations – taking the enthusiast to the Deep South and the Mid-west in the USA and back to the Scottish coast. Each tournament poses its own challenges and pleasures – topography, views and setting play as important a role as the course design for players and spectators alike. Few golf enthusiasts, however, can resist the allure of the windswept grasses, heather, gorse and dunes of the classic Scottish links courses, the home of Open golf. The only major men’s golf championship held outside the USA provides a thrilling spectacle over a rota of nine different courses. The Open Championship is now administered by the R&A taking place over four days, and is the third major of the year after The Masters and the US Open and before the PGA Championship. Most of the 156 places are taken by top players who are exempt from qualifying, usually because they feature in the top 50 in the Official World Golf Rankings, have won one of the other majors, or are in the top 10 from the previous year’s Open Championship. In 2011 the prize money totalled over £5 million, the highest of any of the majors.