Document: Golf in America earlier than thought

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — It appears that golf arrived in America earlier than originally thought.

The Post and Courier of Charleston reports (http://bit.ly/1rTjbr0) the birth of the game in what became the United States had long been dated to 1743. That’s when 432 golf balls and 96 clubs were shipped to Charleston businessman David Deas.

Now a researcher at the National Archives of Scotland has discovered golf arrived four years earlier.

Historian and author David Purdie tells the newspaper a document dated June 29, 1739, mentions golf clubs shipped from Scotland to a Charleston businessman for $350 in today’s dollars.

Purdie says the oldest continuously operating golf club in the United States is Saint Andrew’s in Yonkers, New York, founded in 1888. But the game was being played in Charleston 150 years earlier.

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Information from: The Post and Courier, http://www.postandcourier.com