Did China invent golf? 'It kinna' be,' Scots say - Print Version - International Herald Tribune: "Did China invent golf? 'It kinna' be,' Scots say
By Patrick L. Smith International Herald Tribune
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2006
HONG KONG Famously, they gave the world gunpowder.

They also came up with the wheelbarrow, the umbrella, printing and paper, phosphorescent paint and something called land sailing. Nowadays, of course, they give us practically everything in great, cheap quantities.

But golf? Did the Chinese invent golf and export it westward centuries before any Scottish shepherd ever thought of making a game out of his forlorn fate?

Say something quickly in a lilting brogue. 'It kinna' be,' for instance.

That is, roughly speaking, the Scottish position on the matter: It cannot be.

But the Chinese have a compelling argument that it was they, indeed, who first played the game, and a museum in Hong Kong now plans to display the evidence in an exhibition that is to open in a few weeks' time.

You have to see this stuff to believe it. Then you have to be careful what you say, because just who gave the world golf is a matter as tricky as any fairway at St. Andrews, the Scottish town in the Kingdom of Fife that bills itself as 'the home of golf.'

'The Autumn Banquet' is a Ming"