WEBVTT - A History of Par 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:02.840 I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When 0:00:02.880 --> 0:00:04.960 I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:07.000 And when I find my ball in a bride egg 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:11.120 Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg, 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:13.280 bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:37.640 the hump. Welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison, 0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:41.720 and today we're talking about the history of par. That's right, 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:46.680 the history of par. The idea of par is absolutely 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:49.920 pervasive in golf. It's how we keep track of scores 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:52.640 and a golf tournament score to par. It's how we 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:55.440 judge the quality of a player's performance. It's how we 0:00:55.600 --> 0:01:00.080 categorize holes par three, par four, par five. It's how 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.800 we categorize courses too par seventy and above. That's a 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:08.199 full regulation course, par sixty nine and below. That's something else. 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:11.400 It's how we assess the difficulty of a golf course, 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:14.720 even the worthiness of certain courses to host championships. If 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:18.840 elite players score too far under par, the course is 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:23.360 deemed not hard enough. Part dominates our thinking about golfer 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:26.280 performance in golf course architecture to a degree that we 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:28.760 don't even notice it most of the time. It's the 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:32.640 water we swim in. And yet for most of golf history, 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:36.319 par did not exist, certainly not in its current form, 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:39.440 where each hole has a designated PAR and birdies and 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:43.760 bogies are calculated in relation to that number. That idea 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:46.840 of par in the grand sweep of the game's history 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:50.840 is relatively new. So on today's episode, we're going to 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:54.440 talk about where the idea of par came from, when 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:57.920 and why it emerged, and we'll also talk about the 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:00.960 effect that the idea of par has had on the game, 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:04.560 and effect that, in my opinion, has not been super positive. 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:08.359 My guest is the golf historian Stephen Procter. Stephen is 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:10.520 the author of the book's Monarch of the Green, a 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:14.160 biography of young Tom Morris, and The Long Golden Afternoon, 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:17.200 an account of golf's rise in the decades before World 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:20.480 War One. He's also the co host of the new podcast, 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:24.000 The Duffer's Literary Companion. All right, let's get to it. 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:27.400 After this break, you'll hear from Stephen Proctor on the 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:39.480 history of par. This episode of the Friday Podcast is 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:42.800 brought to you by Gooder. Gooder makes twenty five dollars 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:46.120 active sunglasses that don't slip, don't bounce, and are one 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:50.240 hundred percent polarized. My favorite pair is called just Knock 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:53.760 It On. 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So find 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:56.720 your pair at Gooder dot com, slash TFE and use 0:03:56.800 --> 0:04:01.800 code TFE to get free shipping. That's g O. Dr Gooder. 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:10.760 All right, back to the episode. Stephen Procter, Welcome back 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:11.840 to the podcast. How you doing. 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:14.920 I'm doing great, Garrett, Thank you for having me back. 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:17.440 Interesting subject today, look forward to talking about it. 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:20.680 I've been curious about this topic for a while. You're 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:25.520 the only other person I know who is equally preoccupied 0:04:25.640 --> 0:04:27.800 with it. We've talked about it on a few occasions. 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:30.799 You certainly have a much better grounding in the actual 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:34.880 history of the concept of par than I do. But 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:37.800 I feel like we're sort of out on an island 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:41.640 with researching this subject because I haven't seen an awful 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:45.479 lot on it. So why did you get interested in 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:47.600 the history of par? How did this come about for you? 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:50.520 It came about for me when I was working on 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:54.760 my first book about young Tom Morris, because I became 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:58.160 aware in doing the research on that of an article 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:02.719 that had been written just before Tommy claims the championship 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:05.320 belt in eighteen seventy. So he's won two opens in 0:05:05.360 --> 0:05:09.120 a row. He's you know, training hard for the third Open, 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:11.279 knowing that if he wins it, he's gonna claim the belt. 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:15.120 And a man named Alexander Doleman, writing for one of 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:19.440 the golf publications in Scotland, did an article with two 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:24.320 other golfers, davey Strath, Tommy's best friend in closest rival, 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:26.320 and Jamie Anderson, a man would go on to win 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:28.560 three opens and was also quite a good friend to 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:30.880 Tommy's and caddied for him in a lot of his 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:35.279 key matches against Davy and other people. He asked Alexander Dolman, 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:39.240 ask both of them what did they think represented perfect 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:42.360 golf at twelve hole course at Prestwick where the opens 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:45.680 were contested in the early years, and they assigned a 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:48.919 number to each hole. And in the course of trying 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:51.800 to explain to the readers what he meant, because you 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:53.520 need to keep in mind, this is the very first 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:59.040 time this idea of something approaching par had you know, 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:01.760 had been brought up because of some other history that 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:03.479 we should go back to in a minute. But in 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:07.159 any case, he used a term from the stock market 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:09.400 for the right price for the share of stock, the 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:11.840 par price for a share of stock. And so that's 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:14.960 the first time the words gets used in the context 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:17.960 of what should be scored on any given hole. In 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:21.640 eighteen seventy, you know, for all the hundreds of years 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:25.559 of golf before that, golf starts in about fourteen hundred. 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:27.880 I think it's fair to say because by fourteen fifty 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:30.839 seven the king has issued an edict banning it. So 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:32.520 you figure it has to have been played at least 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:35.360 fifty years to be broad enough to be banned. That's 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:38.240 a reasonable start, and it might be earlier, but you 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:40.920 don't have any written evidence before fourteen fifty seven. 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:43.080 So if you go from fourteen fifty. 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:47.440 Seven, you know on up to eighteen seventy, well, there 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:49.560 are a lot of years in there. There are centuries 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:51.880 in there, and you know, no one ever thought of 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:55.320 this idea of a whole being a certain score you 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:59.960 should make, mostly because golf was almost exclusively a match 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:00.800 play game. 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:01.400 In that age. 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:05.000 Pretty much every golfer would play stroke play twice a 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:08.480 year for the Spring Medal and the Autumn Metal, and 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:10.880 every other time they would be playing a match and 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:13.280 so there was no motive to assign a score to 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:15.360 a whole. It was just you made five, I made six, 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:18.200 I win. It doesn't It didn't matter, and it was 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:21.120 not part of the thinking. But you know, when young 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:24.480 Tommy comes along and he starts putting up scores that 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:29.120 are absurd scores, you know, then it gets people naturally 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:32.240 the thinking about the idea of what you should score 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:35.560 on a hole, or what represents brilliants. You know. I 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:39.040 think Dolman's attempt in the article was to show how 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:42.760 incredibly brilliant Tommy was playing, you know, all the years 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:44.640 that led up to it, because in the previous years 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:48.240 he'd set records for the twelve holes, and you know, 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:50.600 the record that he had set at that time, fifty one, 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:53.920 turned out to be two strokes higher than what they 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:56.840 thought of his perfect golf, only indicating to you that 0:07:56.960 --> 0:07:59.120 they never had any idea that anybody was going to 0:07:59.200 --> 0:07:59.760 go out and. 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:00.960 Play perfect golf. 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:04.520 It was it was a mythical ideal they were discussing. 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:07.920 All that is so fascinating. You know, first of all, 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:12.560 we have these hundreds of years that elapse with golf 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:17.080 being played and par not being a factor. You mentioned 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:20.560 that One big reason for that is because match play 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:22.680 is the dominant form. 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:26.320 Of golf, foursomes was even bigger. So most of the 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:28.280 time when you were playing a match play, you were 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:32.560 playing alternate shot with two other men against two other men, 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:35.800 both of you playing a single ball, so that even 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:38.920 you can see how that would diminish further this idea 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:41.800 of a par score because you're not making any score. 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:44.720 It's you and your partner making some score and the 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:46.600 only thing that matters is that it be a lower 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:49.200 one than the person's that you're playing against. And so 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:51.559 there's just there was no it was not part of 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:56.520 the thinking about golf. And you know, even when you're 0:08:56.559 --> 0:09:01.000 reading early coverage of metal tournaments, there's not really an 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:03.960 emphasis on the score per se. I mean, it's written 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:07.080 down so and so won with this number, but you 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:10.480 never see somebody comparing it to last year's number, or 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:13.120 you know, the number of next year. It's only when 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:17.640 someone does something so extraordinary, like at one point Gilbert 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:20.560 Mitchell Innis shoots eighty eight in a medal at Saint Andrews, 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:24.760 when scores were usually in the nineties and so high nineties. 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:27.600 A lot of the time for gentlemen golfers that age, 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:30.280 and so that would be noted because it was a 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:32.400 record no one had ever done it. But most of 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:34.760 the time the score hardly gets you know, gets mentioned. 0:09:34.760 --> 0:09:38.800 But it's much more important who was attending, which men played, 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:42.720 which royalty was on hand to watch. All of that 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:46.080 was vastly more important than what the score anyone posted. 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:51.360 It was the Parks versus the Morrises, and individual performance 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:55.480 wasn't necessarily a big subject. But when young Tom Morris 0:09:55.480 --> 0:10:00.400 comes along the idea of individual brilliance and golf starts 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:04.160 to take on a little more currency, which is maybe 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:07.800 I think you're implying one of the first steps toward 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:10.840 an idea of par because if you want to quantify 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:16.680 individual brilliance, then something like parr is almost necessary to 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:19.720 think that through. Is that sort of what we're implying. 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:22.120 That is completely true, Gret, You're exactly right. And the 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:26.720 other thing that happens is that, you know, people start 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:31.600 to get more interested in stroke play gradually, and in 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:36.160 particular the English as soon as golf moved into England, 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:39.000 and now we're talking the very first what you would 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:42.120 call truly English course is built in eighteen sixty four 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:45.199 at Royal North Devon, and in five years after that, 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:48.160 hoy Lake where we just had the open is built 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:54.680 and opens up. So the English immediately preferred stroke play 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:58.000 to match play. And I think it's kind of like 0:10:58.040 --> 0:11:03.040 it's an interesting mindset difference. You know that wou would 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:07.120 continue and even become more so in America. But early 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:10.080 in the time when the English are starting to play, 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:14.960 they they will keep their score in a match. Okay, 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:17.960 they're playing a match, but they'll put everything out and 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:20.400 they'll be writing their numbers down on a card, which 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:24.120 makes Scotsmen lose their minds, like why are you doing this? 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:26.640 Why are you writing down your score? It's a match, 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:30.040 it doesn't matter, you know. But the English from the 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:34.360 very beginning liked stroke play, and it was the English 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:38.000 who started creating competitions built around the idea of a 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:43.440 number of strokes rather than a straight up match against 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:44.120 another human. 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:49.280 All right, So eighteen seventy this article by Alexander Dolman 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:54.520 comes out which essentially invents the word par or applies 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:58.400 the word par to this context, perhaps for the first 0:11:58.400 --> 0:12:03.600 time now in the decades after that, it wasn't as 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:09.680 though par immediately emerged in its modern form. There were, 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:13.640 as I understand it, a number of intermediary concepts or 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:18.280 different types of ways of understanding individual performance in relation 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:21.440 to a standard. So, you know, could you describe some 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:23.520 of those for me? What were people talking about when 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:25.800 they talked about something like par. 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:30.280 The way people conceived of golf in those days between 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:33.880 Tommy and let's say the turn of the century was 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:37.360 with this. There was a notion about level fours because 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:41.280 you know, people didn't assign strokes to holes until nineteen eleven. 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:42.520 We'll get to that in a little bit. 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:44.920 But they had this idea that a hole was a 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:47.440 one shot or a two shotter or a three shotter. 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:50.680 How many shots would a reasonable player require to reach 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:53.319 the green? And then they would just assume two putts 0:12:53.320 --> 0:12:55.559 would be added on by good players. A lot of 0:12:55.600 --> 0:13:00.240 players get three putts, so you know, then they they 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:01.480 developed because of that. 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:02.480 Obviously, if you. 0:13:02.440 --> 0:13:06.640 Go around, and they always played in increments of eighteen 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:09.800 even when they were in eighteen hole courses. So for instance, 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:12.400 Preswick is a twelve hole course, but if you played 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:14.440 in a tournament, you played at three times around to 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:16.040 get thirty six or two eighteens. 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:17.120 As we think of eighteens. 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:19.800 Now, so people you know in St Andrew's was eighteen 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:23.160 holes and that had you know, was evolving into a standard. 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:25.800 Not many courses were eighteen holes, but they wanted to 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:28.560 be eighteen holes, and so the mindset was thinking about 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:31.400 eighteen holes. And if you think about a mix of 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:34.160 one shotters, two shoters and three shoters over eighteen holes, 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:36.559 you can see how they would evolve to a concept 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:40.480 they called level fours. Brilliant golf was to go around 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:43.520 in level fours. And by brilliant I mean exactly that 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:48.760 absolutely first class, very rarely achieved golf would be level fours, 0:13:48.840 --> 0:13:52.760 almost mythical. So you know, if you shot level fours 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.480 for eighteen holes, obviously shot seventy two, and that sort 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.120 of is you can see where these concepts are beginning 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:01.120 to fold into each other. But most of the early 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:04.120 tournaments they would report and so and show it was 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:07.160 six over fours, you know, so meaning that they shot 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:10.600 seventy eight or you know, if it was a par 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:11.320 seventy two. 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:13.240 So that was the way they. 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:16.120 Thought about it, was getting around the course in level fours. 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:21.640 And then there was a concept of bogie golf as well, right. 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:24.200 Yes, and this is something that English introduced. 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:27.640 In eighteen ninety one, a man named Hugh Rothdam invented 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:31.080 a competition at Coventry Country Club that came to be 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:34.640 known as the bogie Competition. So the idea was, you know, 0:14:34.920 --> 0:14:37.640 the Scots hated this so much it's hard. It's hard 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:41.520 to put to extribe how much they hated it. In fact, 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:44.480 for many, many years, the Royal and ancient refused to 0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:46.680 write any rules for a bogie competition. 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:48.160 They didn't want any part of this. 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:52.040 But history repeats itself too. They probably have hated a 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:55.280 number of innovations out of England and then the US 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:56.160 later on. 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:57.760 Yes, no, that is true. 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:02.040 They have been most interested intending their own garden. But 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:06.880 in any case, this competition would you everybody is essentially 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:12.000 playing a match against the course, So you're playing against 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:14.760 what they called originally the ground score of the course. 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:17.400 So we assigned a target score to every hole, and 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:19.480 if you beat the target score, you won the hole. 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:21.280 If you didn't, you lost the hole. 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:25.040 So the person who this came to be known as 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:28.160 the bogie score over time, because there was a very 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:30.560 popular song. There's always been the notion of the bogey 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:33.320 man in Scotland and England, and there was a very 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:35.680 popular song then called Hush Hush, he comes to Bogeyman. 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:41.360 And so then gradually somebody assigned it a rank and 0:15:41.400 --> 0:15:44.080 it became known as Colonel Boge. So there was this 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:46.760 big figure. You're playing against Colonel Bogie in a match, 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:49.240 and the person who beats Colonel Bogee by the most 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:50.400 holes wins the match. 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:52.640 That's how they did it, and. 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:55.360 So you can see that in the necessity of assigning 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:58.880 a score to the hole, you're now approaching something like 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:01.880 very like what we think of his par But what's 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:04.600 interesting to understand, Garrett, is when they were assigning a 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:07.840 bogie score to a hole, they weren't assigning it as 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:10.240 what you would think a professional player would make on 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:13.400 this hole. They were thinking of it as what would 0:16:13.440 --> 0:16:16.480 a good solid club player, like a low handicapped man, 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:19.960 not necessarily even a scratch person be able to make 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:22.640 on this hole, or should make. And that became the 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:25.360 bogie score, what you should make if you're a decent player. 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:29.400 And obviously a lot of not very decent players played 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.360 golf then as they do now, and so people would 0:16:32.400 --> 0:16:35.440 be way over the bogie score sometimes, and you know, 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:37.760 really great players might be under it. But so it 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:40.000 wasn't exactly what we think of as par but it 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:43.040 was creeping quite close to it, and scores assigned to 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:45.880 holes obviously is closer. 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:49.400 Still, it seems to me that there are two big 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:53.600 innovations here with the bogey competition, one of which you 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:57.480 just named, which is that individual holes are being assigned 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:01.720 a certain number that's very different from level fours, right, 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:05.040 And so now we're getting down to the granular level 0:17:05.200 --> 0:17:08.439 of the hole and saying this hole should be played 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:11.560 in this number of strokes. And then the other thing 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:17.000 is not not following the concept of ideal or perfect golf. 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:20.880 This is more like what a player might be expected 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:24.919 to shoot, not in this case necessarily a scratch or 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:29.960 professional or elite player, but a normal player. This is 0:17:30.040 --> 0:17:33.840 not a not an abstract concept of perfect golf that 0:17:33.880 --> 0:17:37.960 we're talking about. This is more grounded. And so that 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:42.679 those two things strike me as very distinct moves toward 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:46.760 a modern notion of par no. 0:17:47.160 --> 0:17:48.680 And this is the time, you know, you got to 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:52.560 keep in mind, in the eighteen nineties golf is absolutely 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:56.359 exploding in England. You know, you get to periods of 0:17:56.440 --> 0:17:59.280 time in the eighteen ninety four ninety five, where one 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:02.240 golf course is being built every week in England, and 0:18:02.320 --> 0:18:05.720 so the game's really growing super fast. More and more 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:08.240 and more players are getting into it, and of course 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:10.520 women are also starting to take to the game in 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:11.959 great numbers. 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:13.960 And it's the women. 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:17.320 Who actually end up taking the next big step along 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:22.679 the road to assign pars to individual holes. And I 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:25.560 think that's one thing that's not quite as well known 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:30.040 in history as it should be, really the contribution that 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:33.600 women have made to the organization of the game. 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:38.000 And what is that contribution in this particular case, how 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:41.080 did women players contribute to the concept of par. 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:45.679 In eighteen ninety three, a bunch of women's golf clubs 0:18:45.720 --> 0:18:48.600 got together to form the Ladies Golf Union. You know, 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:51.640 at this very same time there's a huge argument going 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:53.520 on in the men's game about. 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:54.800 Who is in control of this game. 0:18:55.480 --> 0:19:00.240 Certain Englishmen like doctor William Laidlaw Purvis felt like somebody 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:02.640 in London should take over this game in a way 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:06.600 that you know, soccer and tennis have been sort of circular, 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:09.560 you know, focused in London, and of course, but the 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:11.760 majority of golfers, I think felt that the Royal and 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:13.480 Ancient should be in charge of the game. But the 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:15.679 Royal and Ancient really wasn't all that interested in being 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:18.040 in charge of the game. They had, you know, begun 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:20.199 to take on some responsibilities, like they had taken on 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:23.760 responsibility for the Amateur Championship. You could write to them 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:27.200 and ask for a ruling about a question of the rules, 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:30.040 but that was not official. That was their opinion. And 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:32.880 of course most people used what they called the Saint 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:35.400 Andrews rules. They got them from the Saint Andrews Golf 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:38.200 who had essentially copied him from the Leath Golf Society, 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:42.880 and so there wasn't any organizational structure in the men's game. 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:45.280 Purvis couldn't get anybody. 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:47.119 Couldn't get any traction in the men's game because he 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:49.560 was a bit of a difficult man, and you know, 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:52.280 he mostly turned off all the people whose help he needed, 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:56.600 to be honest, and I think Bob Crosby would probably back. 0:19:56.480 --> 0:19:56.920 Me up on that. 0:19:57.000 --> 0:20:00.159 Yeah, I love these stories about Leila Purvis. It was 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:01.720 apparently just a pain in the neck. 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:04.600 He was a handful in three quarters and if you 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:07.240 read the Royal Wimbledon history, you know he's one of 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:09.560 the key movers there, and they have some rather unpleasant 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:11.240 things to say about him in their own history. But 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:15.120 you know, he saw an opportunity with the women's game, 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:18.399 and it was Purvios, Harry Everard, a writer, and a 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:22.359 few others who helped the helped found the Ladies Golf Union, 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:24.520 and through the Ladies Golf Union, Purvis set out to 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:26.840 accomplish many of the things he wanted to accomplish in 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:29.520 the men's game but could not accomplish, the first one 0:20:29.560 --> 0:20:33.120 being the formation of a union. Ultimately, the Rules Committee 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:35.280 was formed at Saint Andrews in eighteen ninety seven, and 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:37.360 all that was sorted out four years down the road. 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:39.159 But at eighteen ninety three the women that this and 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:41.800 they had three goals. One is to host a national championship. 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:45.000 The two is to create a handicapping system, and this 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:46.840 is the key one that I wanted to talk about. 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:49.480 And then also to just organize the game for women 0:20:49.520 --> 0:20:52.920 around the nation and promote the game. So they set 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:56.080 out with Purvis on the creation of a handicapping system, 0:20:56.560 --> 0:20:58.600 and I think it was took three or four years 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:01.520 for it to be perfected. Got the dates down just yet. 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.359 But let's say by eighteen ninety seven it's perfected. And 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:07.920 what that involved was the assigning. 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:08.439 Of a scratch score. 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:11.320 Now a scratch score being the score a scratch player 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:14.640 should make, and you know, that evolved into the concept 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:16.879 of the standard scratch score that you see now on 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:21.040 all British scorecards. And basically, you can't really have a 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:24.439 handicapping system if you don't have a means of assigning pars, 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:27.680 you know, numbers to holes in a more refined way 0:21:27.720 --> 0:21:30.600 than the Bogey competition, because one course needs to relate 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:33.199 to another course. You know, you need to have a 0:21:33.240 --> 0:21:35.320 handicap needs to be able to travel from live them 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:38.680 in Saint Anne's to Saint Andrew's or to Royal Saint 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:41.440 George's to wherever the game was played, and so there 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:43.800