<P> A golf - like game is, apocryphally, recorded as taking place on February 26, 1297, in Loenen aan de Vecht, where the Dutch played a game with a stick and leather ball . The winner was whoever hit the ball with the least number of strokes into a target several hundred yards away . Some scholars argue that this game of putting a small ball in a hole in the ground using golf clubs was also played in 17th - century Netherlands and that this predates the game in Scotland . There are also other reports of earlier accounts of a golf - like game from continental Europe . </P> <P> In the 1261 Middle Dutch manuscript of the Flemish poet Jacob van Maerlant's Boeck Merlijn mention is made of a ball game "mit ener coluen" (with a colf / kolf (club)). This is the earliest known mention in the Dutch language of the game of colf / kolf as played in the Low Countries . </P> <P> In 1360, the council of Brussels banned the game of colf: "wie met colven tsolt es om twintich scell' oft op hare overste cleet" (he who plays at colf pays a fine of 20 shillings or his overcoat will be confiscated). </P> <P> In 1387, the regent of the county of Holland, Zeeland and Hainaut, Albrecht of Bavaria, sealed a charter for the city of Brielle, in which it was forbidden to play any game for money . One of the exceptions to this ordinance was "den bal mitter colven te slaen buten der veste" (to play the ball with a club outside the town walls). Two years later, in 1389, the regent Albrecht offered the citizens of Haarlem a field called "De Baen" (the course) to be used exclusively for playing games--especially colf--because these were too dangerous within the city walls . </P>

When was golf first played in the united states