Mulligan (games)
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Mulligan (games)

A mulligan is a second chance to perform an action, usually after the first chance went wrong through bad luck or a blunder. Its best-known use is in golf, whereby it refers to a player being allowed, only informally, to replay a stroke, although that is against the formal rules of golf. The term has also been applied to other sports, games, and fields generally. The origin of the term is unclear.

The earliest known use of the term is in a 1931 issue of the Detroit Free Press, somewhat predating the earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1936. The most common explanation of the term's origin is that it was named after a golfer with the surname Mulligan, the main candidates being either David Mulligan or John A. "Buddy" Mulligan; however, no connection with these figures is recorded until several decades after the term entered common use. In 2017, Peter Reitan suggested that the term first arose in baseball sports writing and was associated with a fictional baseball player "Swat Mulligan".

The United States Golf Association (USGA) cites three stories espousing that the term derived from the name of a Canadian golfer, David B. Mulligan (1869–1954). At one time, he was the manager of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. He played at the Country Club of Montreal golf course, in Saint-Lambert near Montreal during the 1920s. There are three variations in reports indicating his being the Mulligan associated with the term. One version has it that one day after hitting a poor tee shot, Mulligan immediately re-teed and shot again. He called it a "correction shot", but his companions thought it more fitting to name the unorthodox practice after him, and that David Mulligan then brought the concept from Canada to Winged Foot, a golf club in the U.S. A second version has the extra shot allowed for 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 and having rushed to get ready to make the tee time.

An alternative, later story credits a different man named Mulligan – John A. "Buddy" Mulligan, a locker room attendant at Essex Fells Country Club in New Jersey. In the 1930s, he would finish cleaning the locker room and, if no other members appeared, play a round with the assistant pro, Dave O'Connell, and a club member, Des Sullivan, who was a reporter and later, golf editor for the Newark Evening News. One day his first shot was bad and he beseeched O'Connell and Sullivan to allow another shot since they "had been practicing all morning" and he had not. Once they agreed and the round finished, Mulligan began to exclaim proudly for months to the members in his locker room, how he had gotten an extra shot from the duo. The members loved the device and soon began giving themselves "Mulligans" in his honor. Sullivan began using the term in his golf articles in the Newark Evening News. A television program, the Today Show, ran this story around 2005 and have it in their archives. Mulligan was located in the 1970s at the Lyons, New Jersey veterans administration hospital, helping with their golf facility. In his July 22, 1970, column in the Myrtle Beach Sun News, the semi-retired Des Sullivan wrote of finding Mulligan and the history behind the term.[citation needed]

In a 2017 blog post, Peter Reitan cast doubt on the eponymous mulligan etymology theories, pointing out that they conflicted with the (then-recent) 1931 antedating in the dictionary. He suggested that the term originated instead with "Swat Mulligan", a fictional baseball player with extraordinary batting skills who appeared in the New York Evening World during the 1910s. Reitan presents quotations from the 1920s in which Mulligan's name is used as a byword for powerful hits, including use of the phrase take a "mulligan" to mean taking a powerful swing at the ball. Reitan suggests that the term then arrived at its current meaning by semantic drift. The 1931 Detroit Free Press citation has been suggested to represent a transitional form, in that the usage involves both a do-over and a powerful shot:

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!

In golf, a mulligan is a stroke that is replayed from the spot of the previous stroke without penalty, due to an errant shot made on the previous stroke. The result is that the hole is played and scored as if the first errant shot had never been made. This practice is disallowed entirely by strict rules in formal play and players who attempt it or agree to let it happen may be disqualified from sanctioned competitions. However, in casual play, "mulligans" speed play by reducing the time spent searching for a lost ball, reduce frustration, and increase enjoyment of the game because a player can "shake off" a bad shot more easily with their second chance.

A "gilligan", the opposite of a "mulligan", is to redo a successful stroke when so requested by an opponent.

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