100+ Interesting Golf Facts That You Definitely Didn’t Know

Do you want to know something interesting about golf?

I can tell you that you will be astonished after knowing some amazing facts about golf. You may not be aware of them, you may not hear some fascinating golf history, and that’s why we are here to inform you, to give you some pleasure with actual golf facts.

Let’s know them.

23 Fun and Interesting Golf Facts

1. Golf was the first sport played on the moon.
2. Roughly 22.8% of golfers are female.
3. No one knows for sure who invented golf.
4. You are more likely to be hit by a car than score a hole in one in golf.
5. The longest hole in one was shot from 475 yards away.
6. Ian Woosnam has only won one major tournament during his career.
7. Kiwis can play at top-quality club courses for as little as $25 and membership is also very reasonable across New Zealand.
8. Despite the China government’s ban on building new golf courses, cities and communities haven’t stopped it. Developers just avoid mentioning golf courses in the proposed plan.
9. According to health and fitness website ShapeFit.com, if a 190-pound golfer walks across the course, he/she will burn 431 calories per hour.
10. Two-time is not the charm on the green. The chances of making two holes-in-one in a single round of golf are one in 67 million
11. The average golf tee is made from plastic or a variation of hardwood.
12. A golfing glove can help you distinguish a player’s dominant hand.
13. Celine Dion owns a golf course in Quebec.
14. The Solheim Cup is the Women’s equivalent of the Ryder Cup
15. One in 10 golfers said they have had sex on a golf course.
16. Golf tees were not used until the 1920s.
17. A popular 1890s song, “The Bogey Man” was the source of the golf term “bogey”
18. The highest-priced golf club ever sold was in the 18th century.
19. The rarest score of all (the condor) is when a golfer makes a hole in one on a par 5. This score is so unique, it has only been recorded 4 times!
20. If you walked all eighteen holes instead of riding in a golf cart, you would walk approximately four miles.
21. The word “caddy” comes from the French word for student, “cadet”, which is pronounced cad-DAY
22. Before golf tees, players would shape mounds of sand and place the golf ball on top. Tees were finally popularized in the 1920s.
23. Get Golf Ready, which is designed to introduce new players to the game, set records with more than 107,000 graduates and a three-year retention rate of 73 percent.

14 Little-Known Facts about the History of Golf

1. Golf was one of the only sports played on the moon. Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. used a 6-iron to play golf on the moon!
2. The first round of women’s golf was played in the year 1811 in Musselburgh, Scotland.
3. The very first nationally-televised golf tournament, the 1953 World Championship of Golf, featured an incredible finish from Lew Worsham.
4. The oldest golf tournament in the world is the Open Championship which was founded in 1860.
5. It’s pretty widely accepted that golf began in Scotland 500+ years ago. The Chinese, however, claims to have invented a similar game during the Song dynasty as far back as 943 A.D.
6. The modern game of golf originated in Scotland in the 15th century.
7. The first recorded game of golf took place in 1457 on the links at St. Andrews in Scotland.
8. The word “golf” comes from the Scottish word “gouf,” which means “to strike or hit.”
9. The first written rules of golf were created in 1744 by the Gentlemen Golfers of Leith, a golf club in Scotland.
10. The first golf club, the Blackheath Golf Club, was founded in London, England in 1766.
11. The first golf tournament, the Gentlemen Golfers of Leith Competition, was held in 1744 in Scotland.
12. The first golf course in the United States was built in 1851 at the St. Andrews Golf Club in New York.
13. The first golf club in the United States, the Foxburg Country Club, was founded in 1887 in Pennsylvania.
14. The first professional golfer was Allan Robertson, a Scottish golfer who began giving exhibitions and lessons in the 1840s.

9 Facts About Legendary Golfers

1. Phil Michelson is actually right-handed. He just learned to play left-handed by imitating his father
2. The record for the longest hole-in-one belongs to Lou Kretlow, who achieved a hole-in-one at a 427-yard course in 1961. Kretlow was originally a baseball player and enjoyed much success.
3. Doug Ford entered a contest and predicted his own 1957 victory as well as his winning score of 282.
4. The youngest golfer ever recorded to successfully shoot a hole in one was 3 years old.
5. PGA players pay their own travel expenses with exception of the top golf pros where their fees are paid by their sponsors.
6. The average professional golfer will hit about 500 golf balls—per day. This is not counting chipping and putting.
7. Only 20% of golfers can break the score of 90 on the course
8. Tiger Woods made his first hole-in-one at the age of eight.
9. The term “birdie” was coined accidentally by Ab Smith who hit a “bird of a shot” in 1889.

18 Surprising Facts about Women’s Golf

1. The first round of women’s golf was played 400 years after the invention of golf.
2. The number of young women golfers rose from less than 20% to 36% in just 15 years.
3. Every year around 40 LPGA tournaments are played.
4. A woman named Isette Miller from London invented the handicap system. She developed early versions of golf handicap considering different abilities and experience in 1893.
5. The first female golfer is thought to be Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.
6. The term “Caddie” was coined by the first female golfer Mary Queen, deriving from the French word for student “Cadet”.
7. St. Andrews Ladies Putting Club, founded in 1867, is the first official women’s golf club.
8. Mini golf was actually designed for women as it was deemed improper for women to hold the club past shoulders. Ladies’ Putting Club of St. Andrews built a putting course in 1867 for that.
9. The first ever women golf tournament was held at Musselburgh on New Year’s Day.
10. The Ladies Professional Golf Association ( LPGA) was established in 1950 with 13 women founding members.
11. According to the National Golf Foundation number of women golfers’ are around 5.8 Million, which is 19% of all golfers.
12. Lydia Ko, a 14 year old girl, is the youngest player to win a professional golf tour event.
13. An average LPGA professional’s average driver swing speed is 96 mph and its 62 mph for a non-professional woman golfer.
14. Patty Berg was the first to win the U.S. Women’s Open in 1946. She was also one of the 13 founding members and first president of LPGA in 1950.
15. Kathy Whitwort, winner of 88 championships, won LPGA’s Player of the Year from 1966 to 1973 except in 1970.
16. In 1978, Nancy Lopez became the first woman golfer to win Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year in the same year.
17. In 1990, Juli Inskter became the first ever woman to win the Invitational Pro-Am at Pebble Beach, a professional golf tournament where both men and women compete head to head.
18. Every year around 40 LPGA tournaments are played.
19. Australian Karrie Webb became the first woman golfer to earn over $1 million in a single season in 1996. She was a rookie at that time.

14 Fascinating Facts about Golf Courses

1. The Augusta National Golf Club is the most famous golf club in the world.
2. Scott Base Golf Club in Antarctica is the most southerly golf club in the world.
3. Peru has the highest golf course in the world which stands at 9,863ft (3,006m).
4. England has the most number of golf courses in Europe.
5. The longest golf hole in the world is the 7th hole of the Sano Course at the Satsuki Golf Club in Japan, measuring a whopping 909 yards.
6. The largest bunker in the world can be found at Pine Valley Course, New Jersey. Hell’s Half Acre, as it has come to be known, can be found on the 585-yard 7th hole of the course.
7. In the world, there are over 34,000 golf courses.
8. The total length of a golf course can vary greatly, with some being as short as 2,500 yards and others being as long as 8,000 yards or more.
9. The layout of a golf course is designed to challenge a player’s shot-making abilities, with different types of holes such as long par-3s, short par-4s, and long par-5s.
10. A golf course typically includes various hazards such as sand traps, water hazards, and rough areas of long grass that can make it difficult to play a shot.
11. The fairways, greens, and tee boxes are usually made of grass, with the most common grass varieties used being Bermuda, bent, and fescue.
12. Golf courses are often designed with different sets of tees to accommodate players of different skill levels.
13. Golf courses require significant maintenance to keep them in good condition, including mowing, watering, fertilizing, and aerating the greens and fairways.
14. Golf course designs not only prioritize the enjoyment and difficult level of the course, but are also outlined to have minimal environmental impact.

Facts about Golf Equipment

5 Facts about golf club

1. Each year, a club comes along that captures the conversation. In 2022, it was TaylorMade’s Stealth driver.
2. Most golf clubs break due to poor swings.
3. The average golf club can last for 10 years.
4. The length, weight, and flex of a golf club’s shaft can affect the trajectory and distance of a shot.
5. The rules of golf limit the number of clubs a player can carry in their bag to 14 during a round of golf.

14 Facts about golf ball

1. Depending on the type of golf ball, it will take 100–1000 years for a ball to completely decompose.
2. There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
3. A golf ball is more likely to travel further during the summer rather than during the winter.
4. A golf ball will have around 300 to 500 dimples on its surface.
5. There are three types of golf balls: two-piece, multi-layered and high-performance.
6. There are over 5,000 patents granted for golf balls.
7. The first golf balls were made of feathers wrapped in leather. They flew much further than the balls that came after and were used until the mid-1800s.
8. Roughly 125,000 balls a year are hit into the water of the 17th hole at the famous 17th hole at Sawgrass.
9. Golf balls are typically made from a rubber core surrounded by multiple layers of different materials, including a synthetic rubber layer, a thin layer of ionomer resin, and a urethane or balata cover.
10. The dimples on a golf ball serve to reduce air resistance and increase lift, allowing the ball to travel farther through the air.
11. The size and weight of a golf ball are regulated by the governing bodies of golf, such as the United States Golf Association (USGA) and the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.
12. The compression of a golf ball refers to how much the ball compresses when hit by a club. A higher compression ball will be harder and will travel farther, while a lower compression ball will be softer and will travel shorter distances.
13. Golf balls have a shelf life, and will lose their performance over time.
14. Golf balls can be recycled, many companies collect used balls, clean and grade them for reuse or repurpose them as fishing sinkers and other industrial application.

7 Facts about golf cart

1. Golf carts, also known as golf cars, are small vehicles that are used to transport golfers and their equipment around the golf course.
2. They are powered by either gas or electricity, with electric carts being more common and more environmentally friendly than gas carts.
3. Golf carts come in various sizes, from two-seater models to larger models that can accommodate up to eight people.
4. They are designed to be driven on golf course paths and fairways, but not on public roads.
5. Golf carts can be rented or owned by golfers and golf courses.
6. Golf carts have a maximum speed of around 20-25 miles per hour.
7. Golf carts are also used in other industries such as agriculture, construction, and for personal use in gated communities or parks.

Conclusion

You can now easily impress your friends by sharing encyclopedic knowledge of golf facts with them. Even if you are not a golf lover, these facts might astonish you.

So you don’t have to love golf, just play, know the interesting facts, enjoy, share and be pleased.

Source: golfcare.co.uk, pantherrungolfclub.com, pinkgolftees.com, nationaltoday.com, factmonster.com, salarysport.com, golfweek.usatoday.com, rarest.org, statista.com, golfmonthly.com, espn.in, forbes.com, golf.com, ngf.org, cgcoa.net, rioreal.com