The origin of golf is unclear and open to debate. Some historians trace the sport back to the Roman game of paganica, in which participants used a bent stick to hit a stuffed leather ball. One theory asserts that paganica spread throughout Britain and Europe as the Romans conquered much of the continent, during the first century B.C., and eventually evolved into the modern game.
In the United States, the number of people who play golf 25 times or more per year was 4.6 million in 2005.
From Wikipedia.com
