In the British Isles the sport of golf grew steadily at the start of the nineteenth century. The Industrial Revolution and the growing trade created the conditions for a steadily increasing class of gentlemen, and golf become ever more popular. But ladies too were fascinated by the game, and from 1810 there is a record of the first female golf club - The Fish Wives from Musselburgh, west of Edinburgh.

From 1829 we have the first evidence of the nascent internationalization of golf, when a club was founded at Calcutta in India. Thirty years later came the first golf club on the continent, at Pau in France. It was founded by Scottish officers in 1856. In 1888 golf came to both the USA and Sweden, two of the nations where the sport was to make its strongest impact.

It was during the late nineteenth century that golf took on a fixed form, with a rapid growth of clubs, with internationalization, a uniform system of rules, and the development of the equipment. Balls of a type of rubber called gutta-percha began to be manufactured in 1848. They were durable and much cheaper than before.

In 1860 the Open Championship began in Scotland. The first competition was held at the Prestwick golf course (see below). A father and son named Morris dominated the competition in first years. They were professionals. They worked as green keepers, course designers, instructors, and they played exhibition matches against each other. Tom Morris Sr and Tom Morris Jr were then followed by a long series of legendary pros: Henry Vardon, Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Seve Ballesteros and others, up to today's Tiger Woods and Annika Sörenstam. But perhaps the most famous of all players was in fact an amateur: the lawyer Bobby Jones, who also started the most important of all the American competitions, the US Masters at Augusta National.