# Golf - Mulligan

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-mulligan/60326>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 1, 2001, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-mulligan/60326 "2001-04-01T01:53:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![alisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@alisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alisa)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2001, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-mulligan/60326/1 "2001-04-01T01:53:40Z")

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Was Mulligan a really bad golfer that they named it after him?

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**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2001, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/golf-mulligan/60326/2 "2001-04-01T02:49:41Z")

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JE Lighter _American Slang_ shows the first printed use of the term as relates to golf in a 1949 cite.

He lists the term _Mulligan_ as referring derisively about an Irish person as early as 1874, inferring that a mulligan was a stupid Irishman.

In a 1970 golf encyclopedia, he says _mulligan_ is similar to a _shapiro_!

Not hard to extrapolate that giving an opponent a second shot after they blew the first one might come to have a derrogatory slang origin.