{"id":1171751,"date":"2026-02-13T02:46:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T02:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=556864"},"modified":"2026-02-13T02:46:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T02:46:07","slug":"as-the-masters-tournament-begins-remember-that-hobbits-invented-golf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/as-the-masters-tournament-begins-remember-that-hobbits-invented-golf\/","title":{"rendered":"As the Masters Tournament begins, remember that hobbits invented golf"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bilbo
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Masters Tournament, the emerald jewel in the crown of professional golf, begins this week. That\u2019s a statement I\u2019m reasonably confident about, but not totally, because I know almost nothing about professional golf. But not completely <\/em>nothing. I know that in J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s Middle-earth, it was invented by hobbits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oh<\/em>, you may be thinking, is the connection between hobbits and golf some kind of oblique reference<\/a> to one line deep in an appendix<\/a>, or perhaps a silly inference one could make from movie dialogue<\/a>?<\/em> But, no, it\u2019s nothing of the sort.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tolkien just\u2026 says it in the first chapter of The Hobbit<\/em>. <\/p>\n

It comes in a moment when Gandalf \u2014 who has taken into his head that it would be good for Bilbo (constitutionally) and Gandalf\u2019s dwarven allies (logistically) if the meek hobbit were to embark on the dwarves\u2019 expedition to the Lonely Mountain. He\u00a0insists to Thorin and co. that though Bilbo may seem fussy and faint-hearted, he is \u201cas fierce as a dragon in a pinch.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tolkien immediately follows this by mentioning that this statement could never apply to any hobbit except by \u201cpoetical exaggeration\u201d \u2014 not even to the fiercest hobbit who ever lived. That is, to Bilbo\u2019s great-great-grand-uncle Bandobras \u201cBullroarer\u201d Took, \u201cwho was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse,\u201d Tolkien writes. \u201cHe charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfimbul\u2019s head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

(A mere hundred yards is not particularly impressive for a golf swing, but then, most modern golfers have almost 2 feet on Bullroarer, and are merely hitting a small ball that isn\u2019t even attached to the tee \u2014 not beheading a goblin via blunt force.)<\/p>\n

The human sport of golf was named after the death of a goblin named Golfimbul?<\/em> you may be thinking. That\u2019s a little sillier than I expect from Middle-earth lore<\/em>. And you\u2019d be right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The secret of The Hobbit<\/em> is that when Tolkien wrote it, it wasn\u2019t<\/em> set in Middle-earth. To him, his personal epic saga of elven and human dynasties, The Silmarillion<\/em>, was an entirely separate project intended for an adult audience<\/a>, while The Hobbit<\/em> was just a publishable version of the kind of ongoing bedtime stories he habitually invented for his children. It wasn\u2019t until JRRT started writing a sequel to The Hobbit<\/em> that he realized he could retrofit Bilbo\u2019s story into his Middle-earth project. About halfway through writing what was eventually published as The Fellowship of the Ring<\/em>, he renamed his Hobbit<\/em> sequel The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, and the rest is history. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s some evidence that Tolkien may have intended to remove the \u201cinvention of golf\u201d story from The Hobbit<\/em> in a new revision of the book that he worked on in the 1960s. John D. Rateliff\u2019s The History of the Hobbit<\/em><\/a> describes an incomplete draft that shows Tolkien planned, at least at that time, to change Golfimbul\u2019s name to Gulfimbul, thus eliminating the \u201cgolf\u201d pun. But the revision was never finished, and the change was never implemented. <\/p>\n

And so all of The Hobbit<\/em>\u2019s more irreverent and anachronistic trappings \u2014 the Shire\u2019s tea times and dressing gowns and house keys and sets of The Good Silverware \u2014 still exist alongside Middle-earth\u2019s wider world of guttering torches, wizard towers, elven cloaks, and kingly speech. And I, for one, think the story is the stronger for it. It\u2019s certainly the stranger<\/em> for it, but also, dare I say, more human, more handmade, and more personal. Middle-earth isn\u2019t a perfect work, even to its own creator, but who cares about perfection, anyway? <\/p>\n

P.S. I asked Polygon\u2019s resident sports gamer, Samit Sarkar, to tell me some things about the Masters Tournament, and it seems to have a number of parallels to The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, what with an all-male group of heroes battling to win a precious, worn object<\/a> that has known many bearers over its long history. Honestly, that all sounds very tiring \u2014 maybe someone should just cast it into a fire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Masters Tournament, the emerald jewel in the crown of professional golf, begins this week. That\u2019s a statement I\u2019m reasonably confident about, but not totally, because I know almost nothing about professional golf. But not completely nothing. I know that in J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s Middle-earth, it was invented by hobbits.\u00a0 Oh, you may be thinking, is the connection between hobbits and golf some kind of oblique reference to one line deep in an appendix, or perhaps a silly inference one could make from movie dialogue? But, no, it\u2019s nothing of the sort.\u00a0 Tolkien just\u2026 says it in the first chapter of The Hobbit.  It comes in a moment when Gandalf \u2014 who has taken into his head that it would be good for Bilbo (constitutionally) and…<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1171752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1171751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polygon"],"yoast_head":"\nAs the Masters Tournament begins, remember that hobbits invented golf | Arcader News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Masters Tournament, the emerald jewel in the crown of professional golf, begins this week. 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