Mulligan

Mulligan - A mulligan, in a game, happens when a player gets a second chance to perform a certain move or action. The practice is also sometimes referred to as a "do-over."

There are many theories about the origin of the term. The United States Golf Association (USGA) cites three stories explaining that the term derived from the name of a Canadian golfer, David Mulligan, one time manager of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, who played at The Country Club of Montreal golf course, in Saint-Lambert near Montreal during the 1920s. One version has it that one day after hitting a poor tee shot, Mulligan re-teed and shot again. He called it a "correction shot," but his friends thought it more fitting to name the practice after him. David Mulligan then brought the concept from Canada to the famous U.S. golf club Winged Foot. A second version has the extra shot given to Mulligan due to his being jumpy and shaky after a difficult drive over the Victoria bridge to the course. The final version of the David Mulligan story gives him an extra shot after having overslept, rushing to get ready to make the tee time.

An alternate, later etymology credits a different man named Mulligan — John A. "Buddy" Mulligan, a locker room attendant at Essex Fells C.C., New Jersey. In the 1930s, he would finish cleaning the locker room and, if no other members appeared, play a round with the asst. pro, Dave O'Connell and a cub reporter/member, Des Sullivan (later Golf editor for The Newark Evening News). One day his first shot was bad and he beseeched O'Connell & Sullivan to allow another shot since they "had been practicing all morning" and he had not! Once the "OK" had been given and the round finished, Mulligan proudly exclaimed to the members in his locker room for months how he had gotten an extra shot from the duo! The members loved it and soon began giving themselves "Mulligans" in honor of John "Buddy" Mulligan. Shortly, Des Sullivan began using the term in his golf articles in The Newark Evening News. The TV "Today Show" ran this story about 2005 and has it in their archives. Mulligan was located in the '70s at a VA Hospital on Long Island.

According to the USGA, the term first achieved widespread use in the 1940s.

According to the author Henry Beard, Thomas Mulligan was a minor Anglo-Irish aristocrat and passionate golfer, who was born on May 1, 1793 and lived near Lough Sclaff, on the Shannon estuary, in a modest manor house called Duffnaught Hall, which was totally destroyed in a mysterious fire one week after his death on April 1, 1879. According to the author, "Inasmuch as strokes taken after play is concluded on the 18th hole do not count towards the total entered on one's tally card, it seems to me eminently reasonable that any shots struck before play is properly commenced with a satisfactory drive on the first tee, should be of no more consequence to one's score than those swings which one has made by way of practice in the course of hitting balls upon the driving ground."[citation needed] In short, the player's first tallied stroke for a game is the first playable drive from the first tee, and any shots made beforehand are not scored.

Another early story from golf goes back to old terminology referring to a "mull," a small hill of grass or dirt used to tee the golf ball for easier striking prior to modern tees. When a bad shot was played, the player told his caddy "I'll have a mull-again" to play another shot.

Mulligans can be banked up and used the following week, although this is an unaccepted practice usually.