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Ireland's Golf History is long and rich
A Brief History
(as featured in The Encyclopedia of Ireland
contributed by Dermot Gilleece)
The popular notion of golf’s origins in Ireland was described in
the March 1933 issue of the magazine Inisfail. Lionel Hewson, the sport’s
leading writer at that time, noted how Cu Chulainn was reputed to have hit a
ball from one hole to another, 300 yards apart, with his trusty caman. However,
Hewson acknowledged that the birth and early spread of the game in Ireland was
attributed directly to the Scots. He wrote that "the Scots of Ulster began to
play golf, the first club being what is now known as the Royal Belfast Golf
Club, which dates from 1891."
The first known reference to golf in Ireland is to be found in
the "Montgomery Manuscripts", which describes the activities of the first
Viscount Montgomery, an early seventeenth-century Scottish planter in the Ards
Peninsula, Co. Down. In Early Irish Golf (1988) William H. Gibson reported
having discovered that the game was played on the Curragh, Co. Kildare, in
1852. He also established direct links between Scottish military regiments and
the rapid spread of golf in Ireland during the second half of the nineteenth
century.
Ireland played a significant role in the regularising of the
sport. In 1891 the Golf Union in Ireland became the first such organization in
the world; it was followed in 1893 by the Irish Ladies’ Golf Union, which filled
a similarly pioneering role. The two bodies now control the golfing activities
in almost 400 clubs throughout the country. Proper organization increased
playing activities.
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