What happened before 1457, the earliest known golf artifact, an edict signed by the King of Scotland to ban golf? Only idle speculation addressed the origin question. To respond seriously to the golfer’s query, And Then There Was Golf: Lost Legend for The Great Game, time travels. How, why, and who invented and developed a game to produce and incite such passion? An aged Scribe compiled the history of golf’s beginning.

Three threads weave the story. (1) An old man pens a response to the King’s edict in 1458. (2) Twelve adolescents react to a perceived problem with the Scottish Games to invent a new game. (3) Following strict academic protocols, two professors of Scottish medieval history establish provenance and create a modern translation for the 1458 manuscript. 

In the 1399 thread, a group of lads and lasses enjoy the love and pride watching the pageantry of the Lammas Festival games. However, they voice concerns about the competition. Fairness issues in the games posed a problem. Their everyday interaction during play guides the friends to experiment with ways to make any contest more fun and more engaging.

The lasses and lads commit to cooperate, collaborate, plan and produce an entirely new game. They aim to offer fun, fair challenge for every player, every time. The developers bring expert craftsmanship, sharp vision, clear communication, problem-solving skills and knowledge of business practices, including the importance of setting a time for completion. Committed to collaboration, the young folks create concepts, encounter problems, find workable solutions, invent, improve, manufacture and master equipment for the game. Step by step, the group confronted and solved each issue.

The lasses and lads represent the Shepherd, Weaver, Tanner, Shoemaker, Bowyer and Carpenter families. Diverse occupations provide a wide range of skill sets. After they shared the joy of hitting a hard leather covered ball with a shepherd’s crook, they wondered how to fit the experience into the game concept. Carpenters and Bowyers design and build a club to strike the ball more efficiently than a shepherd’s crook. Tanners, Weavers and Shoemakers supply the materials and skills to produce a supply of high quality hard leather balls. Four centuries before the invention of mechanical mowers, Shepherds envision, fashion, set targets, and manage collies to maintain a golf course on the Links

The 1458 thread traces the manuscript creation. A ‘retired’ Augustinian canon, a scribe who maintained access to a supply of valuable parchment, writes his memoir. The old man is the last survivor of the group. He believes that no group friends at any time could have ever enjoyed a better time to be young and alive than when he grew up. He painstakingly recorded details from the days between Lammas and Michaelmas, 1399, when twelve young folks invented golf.

The 2015-2022 thread begins when the discovery of the ancient parchment engaged two university professors and their research teams. Using lecture notes, the professors’ share detailed information about Medieval Scotland. Following strict academic protocol, they must authenticate age and provenance of the document. The lab report analysis provides verifiable, convincing evidence. After provenance in the mid fifteenth century text is established, the research teams labor to analyze and interpret meaning. Next, the research teams collaborate to create a reliable translation from a manuscript written in Middle Scots, Middle English, Church Latin and Flemish, circa 1458-60, into modern English. 

In addition to the story of who, where and how golf was invented, the professors perform another task. They explain that particular time and place. They describe the history, the geography, the economics, the agriculture, the church, the government, and the political changes in late Medieval Scotland.  

In And Then There Was Golf: Lost Legend for The Great Game, readers enjoy the golf creation story, the Scots’ game, long before golf became a world game