Book of Hours - ca. 1480

The earliest image of putting to a hole, from a Flemish Book of Hours, ca. 1480. Calendar page for January (second half), Ghent-Bruges School.

A bourgeois couple and their coachman in a horsedrawn sled, glide over a bridge leading to a Flemish city. Below them on the frozen ice of a canal, a couple stroll. In the lower right corner of the folio, a kneeling man, right hand near the clubhead of his colf, left hand high on the shaft, watched by his standing companion, prepares to tap a golf-sized ball into a hole fashioned in the ice. The concept of play to a target hole was basic to the single-club game of colf played both on ice and cross-country.