Kolf

The course is marked with looping scoring lines and features an ornate wooden post at each end.

In modern days a Kolf court is made from a type of plastic which is precisely leveled.

In playing the game, the player often makes use of rebounds on the walls of the court, similar to billiards.

The history of kolf reaches beyond reliable written records, though it is believed by many to be tied to the development of golf.

[citation needed] In the interchange of fashion and trade, all these games tended to spill across to neighboring regions.

But it was a combination of jeu de mail and chole which seems to have appealed most to the sporting instincts of the Dutch.

Sometimes the players set up a pole which they could use as a target, other times they simply picked a handy local landmark.

In Amsterdam, for instance, colf players were banned from the long and narrow street known as the Nes, under penalty of having their cloth confiscated.

In winter, at least, the problem was less severe - when the canals and lakes froze over, many Dutch colf players took to the ice, finding an ideal playing surface and all the space they needed.

At some time during the Middle Ages, the colf craze seems to have travelled across the North Sea to the Netherlands' neighbouring trading partner, Scotland.

The game was brought to St Andrews from Hanseatic ports where colf was commonly played at the time.

Initially, players used the same sticks as they had for colf, with bails made of tightly-wound wool, covered with leather.

However, as kolf developed, a larger ball came into use that was more suitable for the new form of the game, and the sticks became correspondingly heavier.

A major technical breakthrough came when balls made of gutta-percha, an early form of rubber, were introduced.

The one course found outside North Holland is in Utrecht, in the St. Eloyen Gasthuis (St. Eloy's Hospice).

There are a few craftsmen who still make the special metal-headed klieks used to play but almost none who manufacture balls of the right material or quality needed for the sport.