Scarce Circa 1600's Golf/Kolf Clubhead

        Presented here is a small lead club head 2 3/4" long 1 1/8" high and 1" deep. Some historians believe the Dutch game call Kolf was the precurser to modern golf. Mid 17th-century golf club heads found during underwater excavations and their significance for the study of the early history of the game of golf. These were found off the coast of Britain and were thought to have been traded ware to Britain from Holland. The earlier game called Colf was played over open country, sometimes along rural roads and often on frozen lakes and rivers. Indeed there are more pictures extant of it being played on ice than otherwise, which suggests that is was regarded very much a winter game. There were no ‘holes’ in colf; instead the participants played towards agreed ‘targets’ such as trees or mill doors. On ice the target would be a peg frozen into place. Sometimes the fortunes of a game would take its players through city streets, leaving a trail of injuries and broken windows that eventually let to colf being banished to the surrounding countryside. Golf seems to have started simultaneously, with certain local differences, in Holland and Scotland around 1200. Kolf emerges out of a confused nomenclature as a generic term for the early Dutch game. But the modern historian of Dutch Golf, Steven van Hengel, preferred two other names: colf for the game played before 1800 and kolf for the game played thereafter. The games were distinctly different. Kolf a more decorous and quite different game replaced the boisterous cross-country game colf.

        Presented here is one of the nicest examples to be found, as many do not have any markings on them. This one has a wonderful arrangement of 12 Maltese crosses.  A similar, yet less attractive and less complete head sold at Christies in 1998 for $1,318. Below is the catalog page. This particular club was purchased at the July 1992 Sotheby's Sporting Memorabilia auction for $1,500, see catalog page below.

Here is a link to the Christies sale: http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=993470
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