Terms
What is an albatross in golf?
An albatross is a score of three strokes under par on a single hole — also called a double eagle — and one of the rarest scores in golf, since it usually means holing out from well off the green.
Only a handful of routes exist to make one: driving a short par 4 and holing the approach, reaching a par 5 in two and sinking the eagle putt, or the freakest of all, a hole-in-one on a par 4. Because it needs both huge distance and precision to land in the same shot, an albatross is rarer at every level of the game than a hole-in-one — professionals go entire careers without recording one on tour. The name follows the bird theme golf borrowed for under-par scores: a birdie is one under, an eagle two under, and an albatross — a genuinely rare bird — three under. Americans sometimes call it a double eagle instead, same score, different name. It's the sort of round worth commemorating properly — see our golf gifts.
Written by Craig Fearn, The Golf Gift Co.
From the journal