Two hundred and sixty-two years ago today, on 4 October 1764, the golfers at St Andrews decided some of their holes were too short. The course had twenty-two of them, laid along a narrow strip of links by the sea: out to the far end, then back in over the same ground, so most holes were played twice, once in each direction. The members merged the first four into two, and because the way back used the same greens, that took four holes off the round and left eighteen. Nobody was setting a rule for the world. They were tidying one course on one piece of coast. But St Andrews was the course other clubs looked to, and over the next century or so eighteen became simply what a round of golf is. Courses in deserts and on mountainsides still keep a count that began as the shape of a strip of land in Fife.