SEVENTY-FIVE years ago this month the Basingstoke Golf Club at Kempshott was established with great pride by local businessmen, after some two years in the creation stage.

Golf had been played on the land since 1912, when Mr and Mrs Gourlay, who lived at Kempshott House, decided to create a six-hole course for their daughter, Molly, on the deer park of their estate, as she was so enthusiastic about the sport and the nearest golf club was many miles away. By playing on this private course she went on to become a professional player and president of the English Ladies Golf Union.

In 1926, local businessmen, who were also seeking a more local area to play golf, acquired the land to build an 18-hole course, and with plans laid out by the professional golfer James Braid and financed by people such as Thomas Burberry Jnr, the son of the famous coat manufacturer, the park, with its fine 200-year-old beech tree, became the Basingstoke Golf Club.

On March 29, 1928, the opening ceremony took place, in which Molly Gourlay played an exhibition match with James Braid and Harry Varden, who was also a famous golfer.

Over the following 10 years, membership increased at the club and many professionals enjoyed playing there in various championships and competitions.

Then, when the Second World War broke out in late 1939, the club reduced the course to nine holes, so that the rest of the land could be used for grazing purposes.

With very little food coming into the country due to German U-boats sinking the food-ships with their torpedoes, the farmers were asked by the Government to produce more output for the shops.

Upon the war ending in 1945, the golf course was prepared for the return to 18 holes and this happened in 1947, to the joy of all its members.

In the years of peace, more people found the sport of golf not only entertaining but it kept them fit and well, and by 1960 the club had some 300 members. This rose to 600 by 1980, with others waiting to join.

The sport of golf was first played in Scotland in the 15th century then, over the years, the English began to take a liking to it, and it eventually spread across the world.

The first golf balls were made of leather filled with feathers, then in the mid-19th century they were made of gutta-percha.

In 1899, a rubber-cored ball was invented by an American, and in the same year golf tees were patented. The first golf tournaments began in 1744, and women held their first tournament in 1911.

Many golf courses around the world have rivers and even the sea close by, as hazards, but for one woman in Pennsylvania, America, it put her in the record books. She took 166 strokes to get the golf ball into one hole. She struck it onto the nearby river and, as the ball floated down-stream, she quickly got herself and her husband into a rowing boat and went after it. Splashing her golf club into the water to hit the ball back onto dry land she finally achieved her mission after a mile-and-a-half.

She then continued to strike the ball through a woodland area and back onto the golf course, where she finished her game, exhausted but exhilarated that she had finally completed the competition, even though she was a long way from winning it.