Important information to dazzle your friends on your Myrtle Beach Golf Vacation.
Where did these terms come from , Eagle, Birdie, Par, and Bogey ?
Note – just like the evolution of golf rules , some of the reasoning for the development of the stoke system and its terms were just kinda made up as golf evolved.
It all starts with Bogey, kinda.
In 1890 Hugh Rotherham Secretary for the Coventry Golf Course conceived the idea of standardizing the number of stokes, at each hole, a good golfer should take which he called the ground score, I suppose prior to this your score on a hole was your score: a 5 was a 5 and a 6 was a 6. This was a pretty simple system with no “over par” trauma to think about ! Now with Mr Rotherhams new system you could determine if that 6 on hole number 2 makes you a good golfer or, oh well, I suppose, a “not so good golfer?”
Long story short ,this method of scoring, the ground score, was adopted at a few clubs for match play. During one competition a player referred to another player as a “regular bogey man” a reference to a music hall song “Hush Hush Hush here comes the Bogey man” which was popular at the times. Then It became routine , after this, to call the ground score the bogey score. Thus the ” Bogey Score” was the first stoke system developed in England and was what we consider to be par today, sort of ?
A “bogie” was also a Scottish goblin dating back to the 16th century and a Bogey-man was a widely used term for a goblin or devil. Golfers often referred to themselves as playing against Mr. Bogey when measuring themselves against the bogey or ground score. So I guess, If I am understanding this, at the end of a day if you shot a 57 on a course with a ground score or a bogey score of 55 , you were 57 against Mr. Bogey.
Chip shot- Mr Bogey was made a Colonel in order to play at military courses, thus Colonel Bogey was born.
Then comes PAR Par was derived from the stock exchange term noting weather a stock was above or below normal. In 1870, 10 years before the bogey system was created , par was used in reference to a golf score. Mr. AH Doleman a sports writer asked golf professionals David Stath and James Anderson what score would win “The Belt” then the prize for the Open Championship played at Preswick from 1861-1870. They replied that a perfect play (not sure what they meant by perfect) would produce a 49 for the 12 holes. Mr. Doleman then referred to this as” Par for Preswick”.
My guess is that par, the word par, was used in golf conversations but in the sense that par was a perfect score and not usually attainable. It was probably more common to relate your score to the Devil , Mr. Bogey. So if you asked John, Hey John how did you shot today? John replies I had a 61 , which means nothing since all courses had a different number of holes and a different ground score. So maybe John would say 61 against Mr. Bogey’s 56 ? Maybe not ?
Although Par was noted ,by word, prior to the Bogey standard , the Par standard was not developed until later. The American Women’s Golf Association in 1893 began developing a national handicap system based on Par which was then standardized by the Men’s Association in 1911. The new standard for PAR was: up to 225 yards= Par 3, 226-425 yards =Par 4, 426-600= Par 5 and over 600 yards was a par 6. This system was used in the US but not used by everyone internationally.
At the turn of the century golf became extremely popular and golfers became better. It became very apparent that a universal handicapping and scoring system was sorely needed. World War One slowed the process down but by 1925 a fairly universal scoring system was in place. Par was now the standard.
Now golfers were playing to achieve Par and not playing against Mr. Bogey HOWEVER I know a lot of us are still playing against that Mr. Bogey and his fat brother Mr. Double
Bogey! Bogey – one over the par score. derived from the original Bogey scoring system, see above.
Birdie – the Historical Dictionary of Golfing Terms believes that the term “birdie” is derived from 19th century slang meaning anything excellent A story , a long story, which takes place at the Country Club in Atlantic City has a golfer referring to his brilliant second shot on a par 4 as being a ” Bird of a shot” . this golfer also exclaimed that he should receive double the wager if he were to be one under par. He made the putt and was rewarded. This took place in 1903 and the shot was made by AB Smith and soon after 1 under scores were referred to as birdies.
Eagles – was also purely American and an extension of the bird theme . The eagle was our national symbol and a very big bird.
Albatross- more of the same , 3 under on one hole is very rare and the Albatross is a very rare bird.
Double and Triple Bogey, have not adopted any standardized cute names , although I am sure there are some choice words that we all have for them.
Tags: Golf Facts and figures by admin
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