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I
’ve always wondered where the
concept of par developed and
how it became such a significant
standard by which the game
measures success.
According to Robert Browning’s
1955 book
A History of Golf
, the
system originated in 1890 when
Mr. Hugh Rotherham, secretary of
the Coventry Golf Club in Great
Britain, sought to establish a standard
number of shots an accomplished
golfer should take playing a hole.
This system became known as the
‘ground score’ and was later adopted
for match play competitions at the
Great Yarmouth Club. During a
match, a Mr. C A Wellman is said to
have exclaimed to the club secretary:
“This player of yours is a regular bogey
man.” This was probably a reference
to the popular song
Hush! Hush! Hush!
Here comes the Bogey Man
, and led to
the ground score concept becoming
known as the “bogey score.”
The term ‘bogey’ derives from a
16th century term ‘bogle,’ which was
a Scottish goblin. Consequently, 19th
century golfers measuring themselves
against the bogey score considered
themselves to be playing against
‘Mister Bogey.’ So from the outset,
golf’s measure of success was based
on the age old notion of good vs. evil!
‘Par’ appears to precede bogey by
some 20 years. In 1870, golf writer
A H Doleman borrowed the term
from financial circles where it was
commonly used to describe the normal
value of a stock. Prior to the start of
The Open at Prestwick that year, he
asked professionals David Strath and
James Anderson the expected winning
total for the competition. Their
response, “perfect play would produce
a score of 49 over Prestwick’s twelve
holes,” was labeled par for Prestwick
by Mr. Doleman. However, par was not
firmly established until 1911, when
the United States Golf Association
established standard yardages for
determining par and, much to the
vexation of British golfers, Americans
began referring to a score of one over
par as a bogey!
From the inception of the modern
game, it appears that par evolved
as a standard by which the elite
players were measured. This begs the
question, what if the standard had
not been set as a measurement of
what was considered excellence, but
against what was truly normal for the
day? Had Mr. Doleman asked a group
of average golfers their expectations
over Prestwick’s twelve holes, he
probably would have received a much
different answer.
We continue, to this very day, to
measure everything in golf against a
standard that only few can achieve.
Many golf courses have been designed
for the elite golfer, with the average a
secondary concern. I’ll certainly admit
to having fallen prey to this approach
on a couple of occasions.
Maintenance expectations for many
players are influenced by what we
see on television every week, not
appreciating that the organizers have
targeted a single moment in time for
the course to look its absolute very
best. And by using par as a reference,
we golfers are measuring our play
against the elite professionals we see
on television every week. Talk about
an unrealistic standard! Those guys
are not just good, they’re really good!
I am not proposing that all golfers
should aspire to mediocrity. But I have
come to ask myself, would the average
Par
|
Ty Butler, ASGCA
Does golf
need par?
INSIGHT
18
|
By Design
Par has become the universal yardstick against
which golfers measure their performance.
Ty Butler, ASGCA, considers the origins of par
and asks “Is it right for the modern game?”
The mythical
standard of par
leads to
frustration
and disappointment