[wsmorrison]

For much of the history of golf, there was no such thing as par, greens in regulation, etc.  I guess the notion of par started when one or two day tournaments came into vogue and the longer match play tournaments began to be replaced with shorter medal tournaments.  Yet these were gross score tournaments. Was the handicap system the impetus for having individual holes assigned a par figure?  When/where were par assignments first used?  

Did early courses all have short holes such as 8 and 11 at TOC that would become par 3s?  Par 5s were probably far more prevalent than par 3s when the assignment of par became commonplace.  

[TEPaul]

Wayne:

Are you not familiar with the etymology, evolution and history of that old "par-precusor" Colonel Bogey or the elusive "Bogey man"----the first barometer of excellence in golf?

Stroke play came into increasing popularity in tournament golf because most of the professionals couldn't take the time to play extended match play tournaments. They pretty much could only spare a day or two at the most before they had to get back to work at their courses and shops.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Wayne,
FYI
http://www.pdga.com/competition/ratings/ParHistory.pdf

[Sean_A]

It is my understanding that par came into being when bogey was starting to become irrelevant.  The best players were able to play less than the bogey of a course on a regular basis.  This led to the development of par, which in most cases was 6-10 shots lower than the bogey score.  

Wayne, you could very well be right in that the reason for bogey being outdated was for handicapping purposes.  Originally, handicapping was relative to players within a club rather than relative to the course.  I think handicapping may have started to become relative to courses at the same time par was developing.  

But this is all second hand info, so take it with a few grains of salt.

Ciao

Sean

[TEPaul]

Although it may be somewhat off the subject of par and more on the subject of attempting to determine the relative difficulty of various golf courses and consequently handicap adjustments for players from different courses, it seems that the article by Dean Knuth (The Pope of Slope) hyperlinked above assumes that Walter Travis may've first come up with this concept of the relative difficulty of courses for handicap purposes. It occurs to me, even if I can't remember where I read it, that the British Ladies Golfing Union came up with this concept a whole lot earlier than Walter Travis did.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Tom,
It's not too far off the subject seeing as how they were trying to find out what the heck par should be.

[Alfie]

Wayne,

try this link for "bogey" as Tom Paul spoke of ;

http://www.scottishgolfhistory.net/bogey_par.htm

Alfie

[wsmorrison]

Thanks Jim, Sean and Alfie.  I appreciate the links as they were quite helpful.  As was my telephone conversation with Tom Paul.  Interesting subject.  

I wonder what were the numbers of par 3s, 4s and 5s on early courses once the practice was established.  Seems to me there would have been few par 3 holes (St. Andrews had only 2 since the course was revised from 22 to 18 holes) and likely an even distribution of par 4 and par 5 holes.  I'm curious when/where the convention of 4 par 3s and par 5s with the remainder par 4s came into popularity.

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