A History of Par

The Fried Egg Golf Podcast

thefriedegg.com

Golf, Sports

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2023

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The idea of par dominates our thinking about golf. It's how we judge a player's performance. It's how we assess the difficulty of a golf course. It's how we categorize holes and courses. It shapes our perception of the game in way's that we don't even notice; it's the water we swim in. And yet for most of golf history, the idea of par did not exist. Today's guest is Stephen Proctor (@SProctorGolf), a golf historian and the author of Monarch of the Green and The Long Golden Afternoon, as well as a co-host of the podcast The Duffer's Literary Companion. Stephen joins Garrett to discuss why par wasn't a necessary concept in the game's early centuries, how the desire for something like par emerged during Young Tom Morris's time, and how the idea began to gain momentum as golf spread to the United States in the early 1900s. They also talk about the effect that par has had on the game—an effect that neither Stephen nor Garrett sees as particularly positive.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I miss a green, for example. I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
0:05.0	And when I find my ball in a bright egg.
0:07.0	Bright egg.
0:08.0	The dreaded bright egg.
0:09.0	Bright egg.
0:10.0	Bright egg.
0:11.0	Bright egg.
0:12.0	Bright egg lie. I'm about ready to run off the golf course.
0:30.0	Welcome to the Friday podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison and today we're talking about the history of par.
0:41.0	That's right. The history of par.
0:44.0	The idea of par is absolutely pervasive in golf.
0:48.0	It's how we keep track of scores and a golf tournament, score to par.
0:52.0	It's how we judge the quality of a player's performance. It's how we categorize holes.
0:57.0	Par three, par four, par five. It's how we categorize courses to par 70 and above.
1:03.0	That's a full regulation course. Par 69 and below. That's something else.
1:08.0	It's how we assess the difficulty of a golf course, even the worthiness of certain courses to host championships.
1:14.0	If elite players score too far under par, the course is deemed not hard enough.
1:20.0	Par dominates our thinking about golf or performance in golf course architecture to a degree that we don't even notice it most of the time.
1:28.0	It's the water we swim in.
1:30.0	And yet for most of golf history, par did not exist.
1:34.0	Certainly not in its current form where each hole has a designated par and birdies and bogies are calculated in relation to that number.
1:42.0	That idea of par in the grand sweep of the game's history is relatively new.
	...

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