Is Anyone Ever Truly Happy With A Bogey?

[Jim Tang]

Sometimes a bogey is not a bad score.  A pro breaks par becasue he knows how to turn potential blow up holes into bogeys.  Guys who make doubles and triples miss the cut.  Guys who hit a bad shot and then can recover, making maybe a tough par or a solid bogey are around for the weekend.

So yes, I think if you hit a terrible drive or approach, sometimes a bogey is a good score.  EVERYONE is going to hit some poor shots.  Recover, survive the hole and move on.  If you make a bogey after a poor shot or even two, you feel like perhaps you stole one.

[Bill_McBride]

J. B. Holmes would love to have made a bogey on #1 in the final round last weekend in the PGA!

That was one really ugly triple.

[Phil McDade]

J. B. Holmes would love to have made a bogey on #1 in the final round last weekend in the PGA!

That was one really ugly triple.

And pretty good evidence that some pros, sometimes, lack the common sense of an everyday hack bogey golfer (most of whom, at least the ones I know, would've taken the first unplayable, instead of trying to extract a miracle out of what he was faced with, and ending up with a second unplayable.)

[George Pazin]

Sometimes a bogey is not a bad score.  A pro breaks par becasue he knows how to turn potential blow up holes into bogeys.  Guys who make doubles and triples miss the cut.  Guys who hit a bad shot and then can recover, making maybe a tough par or a solid bogey are around for the weekend.

So yes, I think if you hit a terrible drive or approach, sometimes a bogey is a good score.  EVERYONE is going to hit some poor shots.  Recover, survive the hole and move on.  If you make a bogey after a poor shot or even two, you feel like perhaps you stole one.

Good point - this is a big part of why Michelle Wie struggles in men's events (and sometimes even in women's). A solid pro can turn a double (or worse) into a bogey with an almost magical ease.

[Mike Hendren]

Yes.

Bogey

[Sean_A]

Dan - good post, good points. Some reactions:

'Why par?' Because it's actually quite a sane (if arbitrary) measuring stick.  And after a certain skill level is attained, it's actually quite a gentle teacher, i.e. less demanding than the birdie, but more diciplined than the bogie. It allows room for various ways of achieving it, and even room for one poor shot or calculation.

But in truth, I'm just trying to find a 'logical' explanation for a feeling I have, i.e. I do feel better after a par than after a bogie, every time, and I certainly do measure whether I am (objectively) getting better or worse as a golfer by how well I do relative to par. 

I also love the feeling of a pefectly struck long iron or putting a good solid roll on a putt, regardless of the results...but I wouldn't want to quantify how I'm progressing by that method.

Peter 

Actually, an older measure of golf scoring was "bogey," which was the score an average golfer could expect to make on a given hole.  "Par" was reserved for the scratch man.  UK scorecards often still carry the "bogey" rating of a course.

If you are a 12 handicap, then a bogey on the #12 hole is a net par, or your "personal par" for that hole.  To think that 12 handicaps should be disappointed by not parring every hole is pretty laughable.

Ace

The Bogey score was not what a bogey player was expected to score.  It was a level for the very good amateur, but not an expert or pro.  Hence par may have been something like 70 (for instance) and the bogey card 75.  A bogey player would be expected to shoot much closer to 90. 

I am completely in the camp with Dan.  Par has no bearing on what one shoots.  There is no question that par is an arbirtrary number and a very outdated number these days because the best pros are all well better than scratch players.  I can't imagine many pros winning events shooting par week after week.  If a person makes decisions about shots based on the concept of par they are either foolish, great or both.  I think of par as merely an easy way to help describe a hole - that is all.  Par in no way influences my shot selection.  I spose this correlates with my belief that a player cannot compete against par because par is not a competitor in a game of golf.

So far as expectations go, mine change with each shot - thats about all I can say. 

Ciao