Golf Terms Explained: What Birdie, Bogey and Eagle Actually Mean

Put golf on the television and within a minute the commentator says something like this: 'A birdie at fourteen takes him to four under, two clear of the field after that bogey on the last.' If you have never played, almost every word in that sentence sounds like a code. Birds, numbers below zero, and a score that sounds like something hiding under the bed.

The good news is that the whole code rests on one idea. Once you understand par, every other score name falls into place, and you can follow any leaderboard in the world.

This guide explains par first, then every score name from best to worst, where the strange names came from, and how to read a scorecard. After that, it shows how to practise the same idea on the greens of our golf putting game, where every hole has a par of its own.

Par is the number of strokes an expert golfer is expected to need to finish a hole. Every hole on a course has one, printed on the scorecard and usually on a sign at the tee. Most holes are a par 3, a par 4 or a par 5, and the number depends mainly on how long the hole is.

Here is the simple way to think about it. Par always includes two putts on the green. So on a par 3, a good player is expected to reach the green with one shot and then take two putts. On a par 4, it is two shots to reach the green and two putts. On a par 5, it is three shots and two putts.

Add up the par of every hole and you get the par for the course. Most full 18-hole courses have a par somewhere between 70 and 72. A player who takes 68 shots on a par-72 course has scored 'four under par', and that is the number you see on a leaderboard: -4. Exactly on par is called 'even', shown as E. Above par is shown with a plus, so +2 means two over.

In golf, the lowest score wins. Every stroke counts as one, so the aim is always to take fewer of them than par.

In American slang of the late 1800s, a 'bird' was anything excellent, the way someone today might call a great shot 'sick' or 'fire'. The Atlantic City Country Club in New Jersey says the word birdie was born on its course around the turn of the twentieth century, when a player hit a shot close to the hole and called it 'a bird of a shot'. The club still tells the story proudly.

Once one under par was a birdie, the next names followed the same theme. A score better than a birdie needed a bigger, grander bird, so two under became an eagle, the national bird of the United States. Three under is rarer still, so it was named after the albatross, a seabird that is rarely seen. When golfers needed a name for four under, they chose another giant: the condor.

The pattern makes the ladder easy to remember. The bigger and rarer the bird, the better and rarer the score.

Bogey has the strangest history of all, because it used to mean almost the opposite of what it means today.

In Britain in the 1890s, golf clubs began measuring players against an imaginary opponent who made a steady, good score on every hole. Golfers named this opponent after the Bogey Man from a popular song of the time, the figure you could never quite catch. Before long he had a military rank as well, and became Colonel Bogey. The famous Colonel Bogey March, published in 1914, borrowed his name.

Around the same time, golfers began using another word, par, which came from finance, where a share 'at par' is worth exactly its face value. As equipment improved and players got better, par became the standard score for an expert, and bogey slid down to mean one stroke worse. So the colonel who was once hard to beat now stands for a small mistake.

A scorecard has a row for each hole with its length and its par, and a box where you write the number of strokes you took. At the end of nine holes you add them up for the 'out' total, and the back nine gives the 'in' total. Out and in together make the round.

On television, and on many players' own cards, scores are marked with shapes so you can see the story of a round at a glance. A circle around a number means a birdie, and two circles mean an eagle. A square means a bogey, and two squares mean a double bogey. A plain number is a par. A card full of circles had a good day. A card full of squares did not.

The leaderboard keeps it even simpler. It shows each player's total compared with par, not the number of strokes, so -6 leads -4, and E sits above +1. That is why commentators talk in unders and overs rather than raw scores. It lets you compare players even when they have played different numbers of holes.

Go back to the rule that par always includes two putts. On a par-72 course, that means 36 of the 72 strokes are expected to be taken on the greens. Half of a perfect round is putting, even though putts are the shortest shots in the game.

That is why golfers say 'drive for show, putt for dough'. A long drive looks impressive, but a single extra putt on a hole turns a par into a bogey, and a holed putt from a long way turns a par into a birdie. Many birdies come from an ordinary approach followed by one good putt.

Good putting comes down to two skills. The first is speed: hitting the ball hard enough to reach the hole but not so hard that it races past. The second is reading the green: seeing how the slope will make the ball curve, which golfers call the break. Beginners usually worry about the line, but most three-putts come from bad speed, leaving the first putt far short or far past the hole.

We built Unihfy Golf Greens, a free golf putting game that runs in the browser, around the part of golf that decides most scores: the green. You stand low behind the ball, the way a golfer crouches to look down the line, turn to aim, and pull back to set the strength of the putt.

Every green in the game has a par, just like a real hole, and because it is all putting, most are a par 2 or a par 3. Hole out in fewer putts than par and you have made a birdie. Take one more and it is a bogey. The scorecard on the course map keeps a running total, so you always know whether you are under or over.

Your score for a course works exactly like a leaderboard number. It is how many putts under par you finished the nine greens, so a round of 21 putts on a par-23 course scores 2. Go over par and the score drops below zero.

Brushing the grass sounds like pure invention, but it starts from something real. Early in the morning, greenkeepers clear dew from greens by sweeping them with a long, flexible pole or dragging a hose across the grass. Wet grass slows a putt down, which is exactly what happens in the game: dewy grass is slow, and brushed grass is quick.

Clearing your line is real too. Under the Rules of Golf, a player may remove loose things like fallen leaves from the green, and may also brush away sand and loose soil there. What a golfer may not do is rub the grass to test or speed up the surface, and nobody is allowed to sweep in front of a ball that is already rolling. That part we borrowed from curling, because it makes every putt something you can still influence after it leaves the putter.

The ponds follow the real rules closely. In real golf, a ball hit into water costs one penalty stroke, and one of the options is to play again from where you last hit it. In the game, a ball that rolls into the pond is fished out and put back where you struck it, with one putt added. A pond is a quick way to turn a par into a bogey, just as it is on a real course.

Reading the green is the most real part of all. Professionals crouch behind the ball, walk around the hole and study the grass because on a sloping green the ball never rolls straight. The dew drops in the game show you the same slope that a golfer has to feel through their feet and eyes.

The valley has five courses of nine greens each: Meadow Links, Seaside Dunes, the Orchard in Autumn, the Misty Moor and Winter Green. To keep a course and open the next one, you need to finish its round in a target number of putts, and that target is set against par.

At Meadow Links, you can be two over par and still keep the course. At Seaside Dunes and the Orchard, you can be one over. On the Misty Moor and Winter Green, the target is par itself. So the game moves you up the same ladder a real golfer climbs, from 'a couple of bogeys are fine' to needing a birdie to make up for every mistake.

The greens get harder along the way, too. Slopes grow steeper, the brush runs out sooner, and from the Orchard onward the aim line no longer bends to show the curve, so you have to read the break yourself, just as you would on a real green.