Fore! heaven’s sake, the word golf was not fore!med as an acronym.
Let’s dispense with this one with as few strokes as possible: Golf is not an acronym for “Gentleman Only, Ladies Forbidden,” a supposed etymology that violates just about every rule of Specious Histories & Ignorant Twaddle (see page 55). In particular, let’s review “Rule 4: If the resulting word was spelled in different ways
Everything You Know About English Is Wrong
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over time, the acronym-based etymology is false.” The word golf was first recorded in the fifteenth century, with the current spelling, but the Oxford English Dictionary also notes that subsequent spellings included (in alphabetical and not chronological order, for purposes of reference) goif goiff, goff, golf (big surprise), golfe, golff, golph, gouff, and gowjf. This would suggest that the mythical anacronymizers were very busily editing their work to get the base words perfect, before deciding that their first spelling was right after all. What’s more, the first of those spellings was not golf but the one that might spell “Gentlemen Only, Unsuspecting Females Forbidden.”
Suffice it to say that the chances of a clever or unseemly acronymic origin being correct is about as good as you shooting a hole-in-one on a Masters par 6.