A burn is only a small Scottish stream, but on the old links courses it has decided championships and turned quiet shots into stories. Here is what we can say about them with confidence, and what we would rather call a myth.

Cleek, mashie, niblick, spoon and baffy: what each old club was for, where the names came from, and why they never map neatly onto a modern seven iron.

Before there were marked teeing grounds, you teed off within a club’s length of the last hole, and a caddie walked with you. Here is what the record says about the rule, and about the men who carried and advised.

Before golf was a members’ game, the links was ground the whole town used: for grazing, for washing, for walking and for hitting a ball. This is the real history of that shared land, and what survives of it.

Before factories and catalogues, a golf club was cut, spliced and weighted by hand at a bench. Here is what the records say about the long-nose clubs, the tools and the clubmakers of the early game.

Long before the wooden peg, golfers built their own tee from a pinch of wet sand. Here is what the early rules say about it, and where the peg really came from.

A leather case, a top hat of boiled feathers and a maker with a sore chest: the story of the ball that carried golf for centuries. We look at how it was made, who made it and why it gave way.

Golf grew up on windswept coastal ground, and its clothes grew up with it: wool, tweed, oiled cotton and, much later, membranes. Here is how golfers dressed for the rain and how it changed.

Before there were clubhouses, there were societies of gentlemen, a silver trophy and a tavern table. Here is what the record shows about the first golf clubs, and how the clubhouse became part of the game.

Who plays first from the tee, and why do golfers call it the honour? We trace the order of play from the 1744 Leith rules to the modern Rules of Golf and today’s ready golf.