What is a bogey in golf?
A bogey is a score of one stroke over par on a hole: two over is a double bogey, three over a triple, and so on up the same simple ladder.
The name is older than most golfers assume. It comes from a 19th-century British song about an elusive "Bogey Man", adopted by golfers as the standard a hole ought to be played to, before par took over as the more common term. The scoring itself is straightforward: one stroke over par is a bogey, two over's a double bogey, three over a triple, and the ladder keeps climbing by name only as far as most scorecards bother printing. It sits directly opposite a birdie, one under par, on the same scale. The word survives formally in one place: Rule 21.3 of the Rules of Golf covers Par/Bogey competitions, where you win, tie or lose each hole against a fixed score rather than counting strokes. Otherwise a bogey carries none of the sting the name suggests. It's one over, and it isn't anything more dramatic than that. Whatever the card reads at the end, our golf gift ideas mark the round.
Bogey is one of the four scoring terms in the game. The other direction from par is a birdie, and the term itself only means anything once you have par straight.
Written by Craig Fearn, The Golf Gift Co. Last updated .