Golf in the U.S.

The United States is, today, golf's pre-eminent nation, home to approximately half of all the world's golf courses and golfers. Once upon a time it was the British who were the great exporters of the game; today it's the American golf course architects who are considered the masters, flying all across the planet to transform distant, foreign fields into beautiful new fairways.

The Fin de Siecle decade marked the beginning of any significant golf history in the United States. The Amateur Golf Association of the United States, which soon came to be called the United States Golf Association (the USGA), was formed on Dec. 22, 1894. Charter members included the Newport Golf Club, Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, The Country Club (Brookline, Mass.), St. Andrew's Golf Club (Yonkers, N.Y.), and the Chicago Golf Club.

The following year, Charles B. Macdonald won the first official U.S. Amateur championship at Newport Golf Club. The first U.S. Open was held the next day at the same club. Horace Rawlins won the $150 first prize over a field of 11 competitors. The first U.S. collegiate golf championship tournament was held in 1897 and was won by Yale University. In 1898, the now common golf term "birdie" was coined at the Atlantic City Country Club in New Jersey when Ab Smith remarked that a fellow member hit a "bird of a shot"; he further suggested a double payoff for scoring one under par on a hole. In that same year, the U.S. Open doubled in scope from 36 to 72 holes and for the first time was held at a separate course from the Amateur.

Fast-forward to the 21st Century and June of 2000 at the U.S. Open, American Tiger Woods' score of 12 under par was the best in relation to par ever recorded at the U.S. Open, and his victory margin of 15 strokes was the largest ever in any major. His score of 272 also equaled the 72-hole stroke record for the event.

The very next month at the British Open, Woods' score of 19 under par was the best in relation to par ever recorded at The Open, and at any men's major championship. In 2005, Woods beat fellow American Chris DeMarco at the Masters Tournament held every April at Georgia's Augusta National Golf Club to return, temporarily, as the number one ranked golfer in the world. Tiger Woods is very widely regarded as the greatest golfer in history.

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