Lesson 1: Golf Sails to England and America
Golf stayed mostly in Scotland for hundreds of years. Then, slowly, it began to travel. Soldiers and settlers carried their clubs with them when they moved to England, Ireland, and eventually across the ocean to America and beyond.
The first golf club in America was founded in 1888 in Yonkers, New York — called St. Andrew’s Golf Club (named after the famous Scottish home of golf). Six men brought the game with them from Scotland and began playing in a cow pasture.
From those six men in a cow pasture, American golf grew into one of the largest golf industries in the world. Today America has more golf courses than any other country — over 15,000. But it all started with six Scotsmen and a cow pasture in New York.
Whenever golf arrives in a new place, it brings with it the same traditions, the same rules, and the same spirit that was born on Scottish links land 600 years ago.
Golf first came to America in 1888 when Scottish immigrants founded St. Andrew’s Golf Club in Yonkers, New York.
Get a world map or globe. With your parent, mark or point to: (1) Scotland where golf was born, (2) England where it spread first, (3) America where it arrived in 1888, (4) two other countries where you know golf is played today. Draw the journey in your history journal like a treasure map — with dotted lines showing golf’s route around the world.
The treasure map activity works beautifully because it makes migration visual and spatial. If you have a physical globe, let your child trace the routes with their finger across the actual surface — the physical sensation of spanning oceans adds meaning to the distance involved.