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French lay claim to invention of golf! |
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February 8, 2004; Source: AnyoneForTee French demand relocation of 'Le Open' after new book credits them with invention of 'le golf' |
 FRANCE/SCOTLAND. French golfing authorities are attempting to relocate The Open Championship across the English Channel following controversial new claims that France is the birthplace of the game, Anyone for Tee has learned. This outlandish aspersion on Scotland's place as the originator of the game has gained credence in Parisian intellectual and sporting circles - including many of the nation’s most above par minds - thanks to a major new book, "Golf Through The Ages, 600 Years of Golfing Art", which will be published in the UK (at least outside Scotland) this year.The work offers images from around the world which illustrate the development of ball and stick games over six centuries, culminating in the modern game of golf. Authors Michael Flannery and Richard Leech believe that one of the pictures, from a 15th-century French Book of Hours, offers the earliest evidence of golf as we know it today.  This flimsy material has inspired the French PGA to demand that the 2004 Open Championship be renamed 'Le Open' and played on French soil. That has led to an Anglo-French dispute unrivalled since Napoleon met his Waterloo, with an angry Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews threatening to ban French players from this year’s event at Royal Troon unless their country desists with its “imperialist” claims. "Just because of some faded old picture and the fact that the trophy is called the Claret Jug, doesn't mean they can walk off with the world's oldest and greatest golf tournament - our Open!" said an official of the R&A, speaking on condition of anonymity. Flannery and Leech’s dubious research challenges Scotland's historic insistence that golf was founded there, sometime before 1457. It even repeats claims made by a German academic last year that the Netherlands gave birth to the game.  The image on which Flannery and Leech base their belief is an illuminated plate from the Heures de la Duchesse de Bourgogne, a Book of Hours which art historians believe was created for a member of the French nobility between 1450 and 1460, before falling into the hands of Adelaide de Savoy, the Duchess of Burgundy. The February calendar plate of the 15th-century book represents men against a backdrop of Loire Valley chateaux playing the ball and stick game known then as pallemail.  Flannery and Leech back claims made last year by Heiner Gillmeister, a German academic and sports historian, that the so-called golf being played in Scotland during the 15th century was actually a primitive form of hockey, or "crosse", in which teams competed for the ball in what often resulted in violent scenes. Like Gillmeister, they believe that game was brought to Scotland by Flemish traders, taking its name from the Dutch "kolve" or "kolf", a shepherd's crook once used in some ball games. Flannery, who runs a golf memorabilia and antiques shop near Frankfurt in Germany, told The Scotsman: "The golf banned by James II was in fact a form of crosse, a game which was being played across Europe at that time and being banned in many countries because it often resulted in violence and disorder.""The game banned in Scotland bore no resemblance to the game we know today - the names just share a linguistic resemblance. The plate in the Book of Hours shows a sophisticated, leisurely game, played by people with time on their hands. Why would a king ban it? Around the time the violent game was being banned in Scotland, the French were playing golf as we know it in the Loire Valley."  But Anyone for Tee can categorically refute the French and Dutch claims. Intensive research conducted in some of Scotland’s finest highland hostelries has confirmed that the Scots did indeed get there first. Noted Scottish historian Archie McHaggis told Anyone for Tee over a large Dufftown malt: "It is absolutely inconceivable that the Dutch could have invented golf. The course would have been flooded all the time. Flannery and Leech are obviously getting the sport confused with water polo."  "As for the French, they had no discernible influence on the modern game whatsoever. Oh, granted, they may have invented slow play, but that's what you get if you will eat snails. But look at Jean Van de Velde; ill at ease on grass - much happier in water, and what true golfer would ever be like that?"Locals at McHaggis’ local, The Sporran and Thistle, agreed. Local security man Jock Strap told an alarmed Anyone for Tee reporter while grabbing him by the scruff of his neck: "Who da ya believe Jimmy? Some French Australian reprobate called Adelaide Saveloy who’s already drunk a whole Duchess of Burgundy or our man McHaggis? If you know what’s good for you, you’d better not be repeating that rumour again around this town." So who is right? Is it the French? Or the Scots? Anyone for Tee weighs up the rival arguments like a carefully-measured mashie-niblick. The French case – and Archie McHaggis' response
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Archie McHaggis: "The Loire Valley! Everyone knows that’s fine wine country. There’s no way that the locals would have had time to tread the fairways as well as the grapes. Besides, what about the 15th century drink-drive laws?"
Claim: Sam Groves, the curator at the British Golf Museum at St Andrews, says Scotland's claim as the true home of golf rests on an Act of Parliament in 1457 when King James II of Scotland banned football and "ye golf", because the distractions were stopping his subjects from practising military skills such as archery.
Claim: The French would say that they invented the notion of 'par' to mean the correct score for a well-played hole. Indeed, we use their phrase in English to describe something ideal - 'Par Excellence'.
Claim: The Scots, of course, have their own First Lady of Golf - Mary, Queen of Scots. But she didn't come along until the 16th century did she, whereas the Duchess of Burgundy's book was mid-15th century?
Claim: Then there's Colin Montgomerie, who...
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