The birth of Golf in England, a new slant.

[stixman]

The earliest known reference to golf, it is well known appears in what are generically known as the Scottish 'Black Acts' of 1457. It was widely thought that King James 6th of Scotland brought the game to England at the time of the Union where it was played at Blackheath in 1608. So far we are in known territory.

However.....

 

Back in 1485 a bloody battle was fought at Bosworth in England and the guy who came second in what was a two horse race was King Richard 3rd. He died and was interred ignominiously in a church in Leicester and then forgotten. The winner was Henry Tudor who, using Shakespeare as his press agent slagged off Richard as a thoroughly bad sort. Until recently the view prevailed but as a result of some serious research Richard 3rds remains were rediscovered and disinterred. The verification of the skeleton was done using DNA analysis.....and by now you are wondering what any of this has to do with golf.

 

Shakespeares reference source was an historian by the name of Holinshed, this was before he wrote his poison about the unfortunate Richard. Here is what he says;

 

Richard was 'little of stature, ill featured of limbs, crook backed, the left shoulder much higher than the right hard favored of visage'

.

So what we have is clearly a golfer, accustomed to carrying his bag and spending a lifetime fighting a hook, hard favored visage implies a lack of success. When you add to that the injuries to his skull, 7 separate wounds, and Shakespeare records his last words as being 'A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse' it is quite clear that Tiger Woods marital episode as a golfer did indeed have precedence.

Not only do we have a golfer defined by the deformities of his skeletal remains and Holinshed's descriptions but we also have a philanderer who had his head bashed about with a niblick while looking for a means of transport for escape, an equine Cadillac no less! All this in 1485

 

. Is this new ground or what?

[okesa]

[size=5]Was that Shakespeare the fishing tackle manufacturer,who might have dabbled in graphite shafts as well?[/size]