It was in Scotland that golf was shaped into the sport known to golfers all over the world. Playing with a club and ball was combined with the hole as the element that gives the game a specific purpose - getting to the target with as few strokes as possible.

The Scottish game with club and ball must have become fairly widespread as early as the fifteenth century. Otherwise there would hardly have been any need to issue so many royal decrees about it, and from 1503 there is evidence that golf had reached the heights of power. In the royal accounts there is a bill from "The Royal Clubmaker". In the following year the king, James IV, played a match against the Earl of Boswell. Perhaps he changed clubs afterwards because he lost the match.
Scotland had and still has perfect natural conditions for golfing on the small strip of ground between sea and land that is called links. Here the sandy soil gave a soft, thin sward that never grew too lush. The terrain was used as grazing for livestock and as a recreation area for townspeople. It was common land, where golf could be developed with the characteristics we recognize - fairway, sand bunkers and the green with a hole.Here people played golf amidst grazing animals and families at leisure. A caddie went ahead warming the public about coming strokes; before a player hit the ball he was give a loud cry of "fore" as a warning.

St Andrew's was one of the most important cities in Scotland at this time. There was lively trade through its harbour, it had a university and it was an ecclesiastical centre. A golf course was laid out on the coastal meadows north-east of the town. Eleven holes out and eleven back. When the course of the River Eden was changed and the furthest four holes were cut off, there remained 18 holes, which then became the standard to which all other golf courses were designed.

Towards the middle of the eighteenth century golf became formalized and stabilized. The first golf clubs were founded in Edinburgh and St Andrew's (see below) in 1744 and 1754 respectively. The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers started a competition, for which the first rules of golf were written. The game was played with balls of leather stuffed with feathers. The first iron clubs began to appear, to be used when the ball had ended up in a hazard. In the eighteenth century golf was still confined to the British Isles and was a sport for gentlemen.