Golf is a sport in which an individual player, using several types of clubs, has the ultimate objective of getting a ball into a hole in the fewest number of strokes possible. Golf is one of the few ball games that does not use a fixed, standardized playing field or area; rather, the game is played on golf courses, each one of which has a unique design and consists of either 9 or 18 separate holes. Golf is defined in the Rules of Golf as "playing a ball with a club from the teeing ground into the hole by a stroke or successive strokes in accordance with the Rules."

The first game of golf for which records survive was played at Bruntsfield Links, in Edinburgh, Scotland, in A.D. 1456, recorded in the archives of the Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society, now known as The Royal Burgess Golfing Society.