Since the dawn of recorded history, man has been fascinated with games involving a club and a ball. Over the centuries, golf progressed, with the first recognizable form being played in Scotland in the early 1400's. The game began to present itself in various other forms throughout Europe during the middle ages. At this time, the game generally consisted of knocking a ball from the 'tee', trying to hit a predetermined object in the least number of strokes. Over the latter half of the fourteenth century the predetermined object was decided to be replaced by a hole in the ground.

Golf became a major pastime throughout Europe, so much so that the Scottish Parliament was forced to introduce an act forbidding the playing of golf on Sundays to ensure the preservation of archery. Over the next few centuries many refinements were made to the game of golf, improving driver weight, ball trajectory and overall game play.

In 1774 players of Leith Links in Scotland requested to form a golf club and proper rules to be written, and "Articles and Laws in Playing Golf - The Rules of The Gentlemen Golfers of Leith" was formed. The rules stated as follows, "
1. You must tee your ball within one club's length of the hole.
2. Your tee must be on the ground.
3. You are not to change the ball which you strike off the tee.
4. You are not to remove stones, bones or any break club for the sake of playing your ball, except on the fair green, and that only within a club's length of your ball.
5. If your ball comes among water, or any watery filth, you are at liberty to take out your ball and bringing it behind the hazard and teeing it, you may play it with any club and allow your adversary a stroke for so getting out your ball.
6. If your balls be found anywhere touching one another you are to lift the first ball till you play the last.
7. At holeing you are to play your ball honestly for the hole, and not to play upon your adversary's ball, not lying in your way to the hole.
8. If you should lose your ball, by its being taken up, or any other way, you are to go back to the spot where you struck last and drop another ball and allow your adversary a stroke for the misfortune.
9. No man at holeing his ball is to be allowed to mark his way to the hold with his club or anything else.
10. If a ball be stopp'd by any person, horse or dog, or anything else, the ball so stopp'd must be played where it lyes.
11. If you draw your club in order to strike and proceed so far in the stroke as to be bringing down your club; if then your club shall break in any way, it is to be accounted a stroke.
12. He who whose ball lyes farthest from the hole is obliged to play first.
13. Neither trench, ditch or dyke made for the preservation of the links, nor the Scholar's Holes or the soldier's lines shall be accounted a hazard but the ball is to be taken out, teed and play'd with any iron club.

The weight of the ball must not be greater than 1.62oz., and the size not less than 1.68 inches in diameter. The velocity of the ball must not be greater than 250 feet per second when measured on the USGA's apparatus. In international team competition, however, the size of the ball is not less than 1.62 inches in diameter, and the velocity specification does not apply.

A player is allowed a maximum of 14 clubs during a round. The penalty for breach of this rule is the loss of each hole in which a violation occurred in match play the loss of two strikes for each hole in which a violation occurred in stroke play, or, as it is sometimes called, medal play. "

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