[Ads-l] mulligan - golf

[Peter Reitan]

In case anyone is interested, I put together a blog post about the word "mulligan," meaning a second shot without penalty in golf.


It was discussed here last month.


I did not find any earlier dates than were discussed here earlier (Garson found May 1932, I found a reference to the same event from October 1931), but I sorted through all of the best evidence of the most common origin stories.  I conclude that those stories are unlikely.


Late in his life, David B. Mulligan, the former manager of the Waldorf Astoria and the Biltmore Hotel chain, claimed to have coined the expression.  He simply said he put the ball down and took another swing - they asked him what he called that - he said Mulligan.   A couple decades later, a different version of the story surfaced that gave him credit, but moved the action from New York to Montreal in an earlier decade, and added a bunch of details about how and why he needed an extra swing.  A couple witnesses corroborated elements of the story, but their stories conflicted, and they both disagreed with Mulligan's own account.


In the mid-1970s, shortly after the second David B. Mulligan story started circulating, Buddy Mulligan claimed to have coined the expression in the mid-1930s.


But if we take David and Buddy Mulligan's own accounts at face value, they could not have coined the expression because their stories would have happened after the first appearance in print October 1931.  The other story could have happened -  but it seems to have come from the back of a menu - and not from anyone who was actually there.


I also lay out evidence of a possible earlier use, related to Swat Mulligan, the fictional baseball player who was said to hit the ball hard.


http://esnpc.blogspot.com/2017/05/hey-mulligan-man-second-shot-at-history.html


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