With the help of all sorts of modern conveyancing technology and solar cells, golf can evolve into new kinds of challenging and exciting environments

1. EXTREME GOLF and
INTERSTELLAR GOLF
By ANDREW HENNESSEY
copyright 1999
In the era of 19th Century Victorian mankind, Golf was initially
incorporated as a gentleman’s social and then networking pursuit
and would laterally attract criticism for ‘spoiling a good walk’.
This old joke referred to the somewhat sedate parklands of its usual
settings. However with the aid of fast space age gravity defying
technological conveyances, golf could be played in extreme
landscapes full of scenic splendour. There could be some very
challenging shots off cliff-tops, canyons and waterfalls, or pitching
up steep mountainous inclines to nested greens and bunkers.
This would require organisation and co-operation, design and
artistry, regulation and creativity and lots and lots of enthusiasm and
merely the technology of the 20th Century. Extreme Golf in
challenging environments just doesn't happen - and why not ??

2. Golf has stayed in its comfy setting ... yet there are so
many genres of exciting extreme sports ... albeit lots of
physically extreme new sports for the young - but surely
golfing in extreme environments even with available public
conveyance technology of the 20th Century at any
elevation is entirely possible and technically no more
exerting than a flatlanders park.
What’s wrong with exciting environments for golf ... I'm
not suggesting that gaitors should be put in the water at
Florida ... or indeed that we do anything ecologically
unfriendly to areas of breathtaking natural beauty !!
There has to come a time when golf will evolve yet again
to its interstellar version but before we go there with this
why do we not get things better here and now on Earth ?
We have the technology e.g. moving walkways, escalators,
monorails, elevators etc now to radically alter the
perception and challenges of the sport and to put golf into
physically challenging environments e.g. cliffs, chasms,
whitewater, hillsides, rugged terrain etc – to make it more
exciting and spectacular.
Golf Courses and trees and shrubs could be lit up at night
with theatrical lighting of golds and violets and reds and
blues, and fairways and green could have very subtle
lighting – such that the golf course was a place of artistic
splendour.
In this environment, the golf ball itself could be made by

3. various settings by vocal declaration to illuminate to
various degrees and in different colours and would also be
able to emanate signals so that it could be variously
tracked and located amongst the darker but beautifully lit
undergrowth.
THE INTERSTELLAR VISION FOR THE SPORT IS
BASED ON KNOWN ET ANTIGRAVITY TECHNOLOGY
VERIFIED BY PHOTOGRAPHS FROM
FLASHEARTH.COM
Golf is a sport that is thought to have originated in the
Middle Ages as one of the many ball and stick games.
However, the game of golf took root and developed in
Scotland and it was in the 18th century that it spread to
the rest of the world.
In 1554 AD in Leith, Edinburgh there is a reference to
‘the Cordiners and Gowf Ball Manufacturers of North
Leith.’ Cordiners were shoemakers and leather
workers, so it would follow that they were making
leather cased golf balls. The Leith Links golf course
itself was one of the very first of its kind in Scotland.
In 1724 golf balls were stuffed with feathers, in circa
1848 they were the solid gutta percha (gum and cloth)
make, in 1901 they were rubber cored, in 1905 William
Taylor patented the dimple pattern, and from the
1920’s onward the standards would be regularly
refined till in 1981 the governing body the R & A – the
Royal and Ancient Golf Club, made the 1.68 inch ball
mandatory as of 1982.
The game has been played with clubs made of various
materials that over the centuries became progressively
more lightweight and resilient. The traditional wooden
clubs from the early long nosed clubs of the 17th
century progressed through the Persimmon woods of
the 1890’s to steel shafted in 1929 to alloys in the
1960’s to carbon and graphite in the 1970’s.
These later clubs and their intended usage on the
course were crafted with the use of; high technology
wind tunnels and the scientific study of anatomy,
human physiology and ergonomics and video images
on various computer simulations that encompassed
factors such as; terrain, weathering and fabric fatigue

4. on modelling software.
In the late 20th Century, Golf had effectively become a
hi tek industry on the cutting edge of materials
development.
Then in 1993 AD in North Leith during an alien
encounter with a strange civilisation that alleged that it
had intentions to redevelop some of the ideas,
artefacts and materials from the human era, I was told
by a being that materialised in my flat that they wanted
me to think of all the beautiful things that meant
Scotland to me.
That if I could think of ways that these social ideas
could be less tainted and used to serve the common
good of a real civilisation that they would be used in
reality and redeveloped on a massive scale.
Ideas both comical and tragic held me as threads that
were uniquely Scottish were lifted directly from my
own awestruck mind. By some process unknown they
spun a tapestry of wonder in my mind and soul. It was
as if I was hooked up to some enormous database of;
art, fabric, texture and forms and that I was searching
for relevance amongst the Scottish section.
There were battles and bloodshed, Kings and crowns
and artefacts, pictures of castles and traditional
cultural things, Inventions that were Scottish,
geography and places, indigenous wildlife, tartans and
textures, cultural art and design, tweeds and geology,
food and drink, games and sports – someone had been
doing a lot of research.
Nothing beautiful would ever be wasted. And then to
me came the image of a game that I have never
possessed the worldly wealth or physique to play - a
game that originated in Scotland - and I realised the
scope and potential of this enterprise for, Interstellar it
could be, Universal it could be. I was shown beings
playing Golf.
All species of every physique, size and strength could
play this game against one another because it is a
game that does not require physical contact, yet
retains a communal appeal, being a celebration both of
skill and the natural beauty of the environment.

5. They say all non-human beings can do amazing things
with mind over matter and mastery of time and space.
In the time it takes a human to hit a golf ball to a green
on Earth a non-human being could run between the tee
and the green maybe one hundred times they said, but
then I realised that if these super-enhanced
perceptions could be handicapped by some sort of
handicapping system then the game of Interstellar Golf
would then become a relationship between; the spirit
of the golfer, and, the environment of the golf course.
Thus the interstellar game was not merely a hole in
one every time.
Golf then becomes a celebration of spirit and natural
beauty not merely a non-human opportunity to annul
and supersede the natural process.
There would simply need to be an appropriate
handicapping system so that a big beings hardest hit
would not send the ball into orbit and a small beings
hardest hit would go far (relative to a human social and
biological scale.)
I imagined the image of a golf ball floating by itself as if
full of technology, then realised that by a system of
physical data, and weights and measures supplied by
each participating culture that Computers could
analyse Beings by weight and mass within and
between species.
This golf ball droid, its flight data, momentum and spin
etc could be calibrated relative to a human standard of
amateur and professional musculature and
performance.
A handicapping system could enable the smallest
being to play against the largest, where the flying robot
ball could be braked in flight by controlled instructions
from the computer if it was hit by a large physically
powerful Being, and, augmented in speed if hit by a
small lighter Being.
Not every being within the same species would
necessarily qualify for the maximum level of data
enhancement and there would need to be some
regulatory process to deal with relative social
weightings such as lifestyle factors.
For example; ET’s who party too much would have that

6. lifestyle translated into human Bio-logic, or, ET’s who
meditated and focussed on the Spirit would increase
their game performance because of the greater
abundance of Life force that would naturally occur
within their Bio-logic. etc
I smiled when I realised that Golf could be made into a
Universal game - a Scottish contribution to the
Civilisations of the Cosmos of eternal proportions.
There would need to be new golf courses on every
planet I enthused, Championships and Tournaments,
merchandising and fashions, trophies made out of
various Scottish semi-precious rocks.
There could be franchises for the manufacture of clubs
that were suitable for certain ET species but which did
not contravene the Royal and Ancient guidelines.
Then I realised that the golf ball itself by use of a hard
holographic interface could mutate in flight to adapt its
scale to the scale and proportions of any course. I then
realised that on other planets, gravity was going to be
a factor too … and that the relative human gravity
standard should be taken from the first Tee of the Old
Course at St Andrew’s Golf Course, Scotland.
Realising that with a technological golf ball such
things were possible and that interstellar technology
could make all sorts of theatre possible on golf
courses that do not happen now on Earth, I then had
the idea that the game could also be played at night.
Golf Courses and trees and shrubs could be lit up with
theatrical lighting of golds and violets and reds and
blues, and fairways and green could have very subtle
lighting – such that the golf course was a place of
artistic splendour.
In this environment, the golf ball itself could be made
by various settings by vocal declaration to illuminate
to various degrees and in different colours and would
also be able to emanate signals so that it could be
variously tracked and located amongst the darker but
beautifully lit undergrowth.
Also, in the era of mankind, Golf was initially
incorporated as a gentleman’s social and then
networking pursuit and would laterally attract criticism

7. for ‘spoiling a good walk’.
This old joke referred to the somewhat sedate
parklands of its usual settings. However with the aid of
fast space age gravity defying technological
conveyances, golf could be played in extreme
landscapes full of scenic splendour. There could be
some very challenging shots off cliff-tops, canyons
and waterfalls, or pitching up steep mountainous
inclines to nested greens and bunkers.
This would require organisation and co-operation,
design and artistry, regulation and creativity and lots
and lots of enthusiasm.
There is a whole Universe of wonderful golfers out
there waiting to tee off. The sport of golf itself and its
first code of rules in 1744AD from the Honourable
Company of Edinburgh Golfers evolved, and by the
period of governance of the R&A, after the inception of
the Royal and Ancient Golf Club as the games
governing body in 1897 AD, it then went through
various incarnations of the Rules of Golf up to and
including the Rolex sponsored R&A Rules of Golf Book
of 2004AD
It only becomes a matter of time then till the Interstellar
Rules of Golf Code is on the agenda at the AGM of the
R&A given the influx of non-humanity on the planet
and the increasing falsification of the game by
superhuman powers, processes and technologies.
The game of Golf was invented by Humanity in
Scotland, but without the participation of human
beings in the future it can grow to become one of the
most important tools of interstellar and interspecies
dialogue.
It may become one of Scotland’s greatest gifts to the
Universe.