one of the world’s oldest golfing societies, founded in 1744 by a group of gentlemen who played on a five-hole course at Leith, which is now a district of Edinburgh. In that year the group petitioned the city officials of Edinburgh for a silver club to be awarded to the winner of a golf competition. It further established the earliest known rules of the game, a code of 13 articles recorded in its first minute book. They were adopted almost without change in 1754 by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, later to become the governing body for the sport in Great Britain. The Honourable Company later transferred its activities farther east to the town of Musselburgh and then to the Muirfield course, with which it has been associated in modern times.
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