It is the oldest club in Norfolk – founded way back in 1882 – and plays a course that winds its way at several points through the nearby racecourse. But what Great Yarmouth & Caister is really renowned for is being the home of the term bogey in golf.
Ever played in a bogey competition? It’s great fun, although something of a head-scratcher if you’re not used to it.
It harks back to the days when all serious golf was fought out over matchplay. What a bogey competition does is take that central element – winning and losing holes – and mould it into a strokeplay competition.
You are rewarded based on how you do against the course, rather than an individual player. So what’s this got to do with Great Yarmouth & Caister?
In 1890, a member at Coventry Golf Club had the bright idea of playing a match, under a handicap, against the number of shots it was thought a scratch golfer would rack up if they played a perfect game.
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This became known as the ground score. The idea was proposed to Dr Thomas Browne, who founded Yarmouth, at the club’s autumn gathering and was then introduced.
Yarmouth’s website continues: “These competitions were played throughout the winter, at the same time a music hall song ‘Hush! Here comes the Bogey man’ was gaining in popularity.”
A key part of the song was the lyric: “I’m the Bogey Man, catch me if you can.”
So when one competition participant said to Browne ‘This player of yours is a regular Bogey man’, the bogey score was born.
