I believe golf started out as a form of battle. You could whack those rocks with a stick
much farther than you could throw by hand.
In lands where there wasn't much to make good arrows and spears from, rocks were a big part of combat.
That being said, golf is one of the few sports that I had no interest to play. Just the opposite for target shooting.
The King of
Scotland once prohibited the playing of
gowf and
futball as they distracted soldiers from
archery practice. I don't believe the soldiers took it very well.
The author Tolkien claims that, "golf was invented when a club-wielding
hobbit knocked the head off a
goblin named
Golfimbul, and the head sailed through the air and landed in a rabbit hole."
They musta had much smaller goblins than our modern variety . . .