The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

Bogeys

Why is a score of one over par called a bogey?

Any game of golf is played against two opponents. You are competing against the other golfer and you are competing against the ground score, the scratch value, the par – the number of strokes a professional golfer should take to complete the course. Of your two opponents, the ground is usually the harder to beat.

There was a terribly popular song in Victorian England called ‘The Bogey Man’. It was about the nasty mythical fellow who creeps into the rooms of naughty children and causes all sorts of trouble to all sorts of people. This song was running through the head of Dr Thomas Brown as he played a round of golf in Great Yarmouth one day in 1890.

The idea of playing against the ground score in golf was quite new at the time. Originally, pars and eagles and birdies were unknown in golf. All you did was to add up your total number of shots, and whoever had the lowest was the winner.

This was the first time that Dr Brown had played against the ground and he didn’t like it. He preferred to play against an opponent because, as he observed, the ground always seemed to beat him. It was an enemy that followed him around the course but never appeared in person, and in the end Dr Brown decided that his invisible opponent was the Bogey Man, just like in the song. His joke caught on in Great Yarmouth and then spread around the golfing world. The Bogey became a score.

Lone golfers were therefore playing against the Bogey and the word spread until it meant par for the course. It wasn’t until the 1940s that the word shifted to mean one over par, and nobody is quite sure why.