The original 13 rules of Golf were written by the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers in 1744 for the annual Edinburgh Silver Cup. The rules of the game have changed since then, but were adapted from these. If you want to play the game like golfers did in the mid 18th century, here's everything you need to know:
1. You must tee your ball within a club's length of the hole.
2. Your tee must be on the ground. (Tees in the mid 18th century were small pyramids made of sand.)
3. You are not to change the ball which you strike off the tee.
4. You are not to remove stones, bones or any break club for the sake of playing your ball, except upon the fair green, and that only within a club's length of the ball.
5. If your ball comes among water, or any watery filth, you are at liberty to take out your ball and bringing it behind the hazard and teeing it, you may play it with any club and allow your adversary a stroke for so getting out your ball. (This rule was the origin of the existing 1-stroke penalty for a water ball.)
6. If your balls be found anywhere touching one another you are to lift the first ball till you play the last.
7. At holling you are to play your ball honestly at the hole, and not to play upon your adversary's ball, not lying in your way to the hole.
8. If you should lose your ball, by its being taken up, or any other way, you are to go back to the spot where you struck last and drop another ball and allow your adversary a stroke for the misfortune. (Stroke plus distance.)
9. No man at holling his ball is to be allowed to mark his way to the hole with his club or anything else.
10. If a ball be stopp'd by any person, horse, dog, or any thing else, the ball so stopp'd (stopped) must be played where it lyes (lies). (Play it as it lies.)
11. If you draw your club in order to strike and proceed so far in the stroke as to be bringing down your club, if then your club should break in any way, it is to be accounted a stroke.
12. He whose ball lyes (lies) farthest from the hole is obliged to play first.
13. Neither trench, ditch, or dyke made for the preservation of the links, nor the Scholar's Holes or the soldier's lines shall be accounted a hazard but the ball is to be taken out, teed and play'd with any iron club.