In 1774, the first standardized rules of golf were written and used for the first golf championship, which was won by Doctor John Rattray on 2nd April 1744 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
- You must tee your ball within one club's length of the hole.
- Your tee must be on the ground.
- You are not to change the ball which you strike off the tee.
- You are not to remove stones, bones or any break club for the sake of playing your ball, except on the fair green, and that only within a club's length of your ball.
- 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.
- If your balls be found anywhere touching one another you are to lift the first ball till you play the last.
- At holeing you are to play your ball honestly for the hole, and not to play upon your adversary's ball, not lying in your way to the hole.
- 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.
- No man at holeing his ball is to be allowed to mark his way to the hold with his club or anything else.
- If a ball be stopp'd by any person, horse or dog, or anything else, the ball so stopp'd must be played where it lyes.
- 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 shall break in any way, it is to be accounted a stroke.
- He who whose ball lyes farthest from the hole is obliged to play first.
- 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.
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