Bogeymen…

Dr Browne, Secretary of the Great Yarmouth Club, adopted the idea, and, with the assent of the club’s golfers, this style of competition was introduced there for use in match play. During one competition Mr CA Wellman (possibly Major Charles Wellman) exclaimed to Dr Browne that, “This player of yours is a regular Bogey man”. This was probably a reference to the eponymous subject of an Edwardian music hall song “Hush! Hush! Hush! Here Comes the Bogey Man”, which was popular at that time. So at Yarmouth and elsewhere the ground score became known as the Bogey score.

A ‘bogle’ was a Scottish goblin as far back as the 16th Century and a Bogey-man was a widely used term for a goblin or devil. Golfers of the time considered they were playing a Mister Bogey when measuring themselves against the bogey score.

In 1892, Colonel Seely-Vidal, the Hon Secretary of the United Services Club at Gosport, also worked out the “Bogey” for his course. The United Club was a services club and all the members had a military rank. They could not measure themselves against a “Mister” Bogey or have him as a member, so ‘he’ was given the honorary rank of Colonel. Thus the term ‘Colonel Bogey’ was born. Bogey competitions are still played at many clubs.

The above text was stolen from here because I didn’t feel like typing.

This post was created by Hoopenfaust, slapped on this page October 7, 2009 at 3:44 am, filed under Golf Etiquette, Knucklers. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any trash talk RSS feed for this post.