Where does the word mulligan come from?
top There is considerable debate about this topic, to say the least. There are several clubs and several people who have staked claims about the origin of the term ‘mulligan.’ The story most widely accepted focuses on a gentleman named David Mulligan who played at the St. Lambert CC in Montreal, Canada during the 1920s. There are several versions of the David Mulligan story. Mr. Mulligan was a hotelier in the first half of the century, a part-owner and manager of the Biltmore Hotel in New York City, as well as several large Canadian hotels. One story says that the first mulligan was an impulsive sort of event – that one day Mulligan hit a very long drive off the first tee, just not straight, and acting on impulse re-teed and hit again. His partners found it all amusing, and decided that the shot that Mulligan himself called a ‘correction shot’ deserved a better named, so they called it a ‘mulligan.’ Story two: Mulligan played regularly with a group of friends at St. Lambert, and in the
