Golfing is an extremely popular pastime in the United States and beyond. The great courses of the world show the beauty of both nature and human design, incorporating gardening and landscaping into the sport’s setup. If you want to find golf possibilities near you, a golf course search is a good
option. Many cities and towns have country clubs and driving ranges, so you might have options. The best country club isn’t necessarily the one that costs the most money and has the most lavish courses. Instead, it’s the one that fits your needs best. There are country clubs for every taste and budget, but it might take some hunting to find one that is a perfect fit for you. So if you’re new to golf, start by looking for good public golf courses near me. That way you can try them out without worrying about a country club membership. From there you can decide what parts of the course you like and what you don’t like. If you have the money, you can start looking into country clubs from there.
The typical 18-hole golf course might not seem like an exciting place, but more is happening there than you might think. Not only can an 18-hole golf course be one of the best places to have a wedding or host a holiday brunch, but it’s, of course, the perfect place for you to try for your best golf game.
Whether you’re looking at an 18-hole golf course as a party venue or a place to play golf, you’re sure to appreciate these weird facts about golf that highlight exactly why your local golf courses are such special places.
-
- Golf probably has more rules than you imagined. When you think of golf, you probably don’t think of it as a highly regulated sport like football or baseball. In reality, though, golf has plenty of obscure rules. For example, no player is allowed to have more than 14 clubs in a bag during any round. Another rule is that you can’t move sudden airborne impediments in a hazard. In other words, if you’re minding your own business and a pine cone lands on your ball suddenly while it’s in the bunker, you can’t move it without getting a penalty of two strokes. Ditto if you even wipe the morning dew off your ball.
- That ball in the water isn’t as unusual as you think. In the TPC Sawgrass island green 17th hole alone, 125,000 balls get hit into the water. In fact, when the 2013 Players Championship was held there, 44 balls got lost in the water: by the best players in the world!
- Your hole-in-one is more rare than you think. In fact, the chances that anyone will get two holes-in-one during the same round of golf are 67 million to one.
- Golf has long been a favorite of women. The first women’s golf tournament was held on January 1st, 1811 at Musselburgh. Today, 23% of all professional golfers are women, and the women’s equivalent of the Ryder Cup is the Solheim Cup. The average women drives at 62mph, while a professional LPGA golfer achieves a speed of 96mph. (For reference, the average male golfer drives at 84mph, and the average PGA player at 108pmh).
- Golfing involves more physical activity than you think. It’s not uncommon to hear people mocking golf as something less than a “real” sport. But the typical 175-pound man burns well over 450 calories during just an hour of play if he’s carrying his own clubs. A nine-hole course can also make a person walk 2.5 miles. Double that for an 18-hole golf course.
- Do you know your big golfing names? Arnold Palmer won a total of 95 professional golf tournaments. Tiger Woods has won more than $100 million in prize money has wone 77 PGA tournaments. Seve Ballesteros won more than 90 international tournaments, and Harry Vardon won the British Open six different times.
- Golf courses are for more than just golf these days. More and more, those 18-hole golf courses are catering to the wedding crowd. The carefully manicured greens and wide open spaces are perfect for that special day. It has been estimated that the right golf course could attract up to 50 weddings a year, and golf courses are now specifically catering to the wedding crowds in an attempt to increase revenue.
Golf and golf courses have a long history, and they’re pretty interesting if you know a bit about them. Golf is the world’s oldest sport, and it doesn’t look like American interest in it is about to wane anytime soon.
