Whats the origin of birdie eagle and albatross in golf?
Which came first, the birdie or the eagle? The birdie (a hole played one stroke under par), and the eagle (2 strokes under par) followed, and continued the feathered theme. In American slang of the 19th Century, the term ‘bird’ was applied to anything particularly great. ‘Bird’ was the ‘cool’ of the 1800s in the U.S. So on the golf course, a great shot – one that led to an under-par score – came to be known as a ‘bird,’ which was then transformed into ‘birdie’. The term birdie was in worldwide use by the 1910s, and it’s believed it debuted in the U.S. in 1899. An ‘eagle’ simply followed ‘birdie,’ being added to the lexicon in keeping with the avian image of birdie. And ‘albatross’ (also known as ‘double eagle’ – 3 under par) came along later for the same reason.
