Why is a Mulligan (as in golf) called a ‘Mulligan’? Is it because someone named Mulligan was particularly poor at golf?
According to Dr. Rand Jerris, United States Golf Association (USGA) Museum Curator, there are several variations of several stories on the origins of the term “mulligan.” All of them have something to do with a poor golfer named Mulligan, yet none of them is particularly amusing. There is a far more entertaining etymology, though seldom referenced, for the term “hazard.”
Born in 1895 in Pittsburgh, Tibor “TB” Hazard was a salesman – of everything from encyclopedias to QWERTY keyboard typewriters – but longed to spend all his time on the links. Unfortunately, TB was a horrible golfer, so bad he was something of a minor celebrity in western Pennsylvania. He lost so many balls, in fact, that he was awarded an early endorsement deal by Goodrich, which also made golf balls in the early 1900s (they gave him all the balls he could lose). The ball Goodrich produced at the time was a standard Haskell ball with a compressed air core, a ball that was prone to expand with heat and explode. On one particularly hot August Saturday in 1919, TB was slicing and shanking his way around the public course in Pittsburgh, balls exploding in the roughs and sand traps and even in the water. Other golfers, some just home from WWI, thought they were under attack by the Germans and fled the course. When they found out who was playing behind them, the term “hazard” was coined.