[Ads-l] "Mulligan" in golf - early example near Detroit

[Peter Reitan]

A reader named Donald Childs, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Ottawa, recently brought my attention to an early "Mulligan" reference consistent with previous findings of the earliest, unambiguous references to the golfing "Mulligan" in Detroit, Michigan, with possible connections to baseball players and baseball terminology.  See my piece, https://esnpc.blogspot.com/2017/05/hey-mulligan-man-second-shot-at-history.html

The earliest, unambiguous example of "Mulligan" I've seen is from a golf outing with a professional baseball player named Sam Byrd in Detroit Michigan in 1931.

 [Excerpt] All were waiting to see what Byrd would do on the 290-yard 18th, with a creek in front of the well-elevated green.  His first drive barely missed carrying the creek and he was given a “mulligan” just for fun.  The second not only was over the creek on the fly but was within a few inches of the elevated green.  That’s some poke! [End Excerpt]

Detroit Free Press, October 13, 1931, page 16.

The next three earliest examples I am aware of were also from the same newspaper in Detroit, in 1932 and 1933.  The word did not achieve widespread usage in print outside of the Detroit area until after a United Press article about a Franklin Roosevelt golf outing in 1936.

Donald Childs found an example from 1935, in the Windsor Star, Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit, Michigan (Windsor Star, 25 July 1935, p. 26).  The article devotes several paragraphs to explain and describe the "latest, and probably most welcome, of the aids to the hard-working divot diggers of golf" - the "mulligan stroke."  In one part of the article, one of the golfers says after a failed first swing, "It's a hit, it's a hit . . . Touch all the bases; touch all the bases," which is consistent with other early examples suggesting a possible connection to baseball terminology.

[Excerpt]
 Sports Gossip
By Vern DeGeer
Latest, and probably most welcome, of the aids to the hard-working divot diggers of golf is the “mulligan stroke.” In common with thousands of the devotees of a high slice and the low hook, this column firmly believes Old Man Mulligan rates a purple shrine in the House of Par.

The “mulligan stroke,” in case you haven’t heard of it, is something that the hundred-shooters have been seeking for many years but weren’t sure how to go about producing. The “mulligan” is the stroke you wanted to make … and tried to make … instead of that fluttering shot that flipped and flopped over the nearest fence or the tall grass like a bird with a broken wing. So you can drop another ball, toss that bad stroke into the discard, and try again.

You are privileged, under the rules as introduced at Lakewood Golf Club this season, to take one “mulligan” on each hole. That is to say, once on each hole, you can play a poor shot over again without penalty. Perhaps the second effort isn’t any better. Often it is worse. Then it’s your hard luck and a “mulligan” wasted.

It is doubtful if the “mulligan” rule was ever worked to greater advantage at any time and on any course, and by any person, than yesterday afternoon at Lakewood by Fred Sebulske, president of the Cadillac Brewing Company of Detroit. Fred is a veteran member at Lakewood and one of the originators of the “Bohemian Day” program, an annual event which had its 1935 outing yesterday.
Fred paraded to the first tee late in the afternoon with five other heavy-waisted, ambitious club wielders. He was elected to blast the first tee shot. And what he accomplished in the way of a full swing probably couldn’t have been disputed by Joe Kirkwood, most famous of golf’s trick shot artists.

Teeing his shot high in the air, Fred swung from his shoe-tops with all the force his 225-pound frame could muster. He cut right under the little white pill. It climbed lazily through the air to an altitude of perhaps four feet and dropped almost at his feet.

“It’s a hit, it’s a hit,” screamed Bill Messerschmidt, who was watching the Kirkwood shot. “Touch all the bases; touch all the bases.”
“A hit, hell,” roared back Sebulske, “it’s my mulligan, that’s what it is.”
With that, he teed up another ball and smacked this one down the fairway, past the 200-yard marker.

And that, folks, is what a mulligan does for golf.
[End Excerpt]
Windsor Star, 25 July 1935, p. 26.  Newspapers.com
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-windsor-star-mulliganstroke/79180474/





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