1st May 2008 - 215th anniversary of Thomas Mulligan's birthday

5/1/2008

He has affected golf around the world - millions of players are praying for him.

Today is the birthday of tgolf genius Thomas Mulligan, the fourth earl of Murphy, keen golf player. He lived at the bay of Shannon river near Selaff in a modest yeoman house known as Duffnaught Hall.

Thomas Mulligan whose intuitive brain has struck the golf so much that he might be compared to people like Thomas Alva Edison, Edmund Hillary, Marco Polo, Caesar and other titans of the human kind was born on 1st of May 1793 and died 1st April 1879 - as 86 years young man.

In his memory celebrates every day golf players around the world at the beginning of the game - as his interpretation of golf rules and opinions on many golf situations are the acceletor for game play for many other golf-addicts.

His greatest invention is a so calld "mulligan" being a penalty-free reparation of a missed stroke at the beginning of the game.

New terms have appeared with time passing by, such as "breakfast ball", "sunday ball", "do over", "egg ball", "toast ball", "coffee ball", "tea ball", "bacon ball", "sausage ball", "will-have-a-new-one", etc. Thanks to modern mass media, internet and Henry Beard it has been found out, that this interpretation of rules has been invented by Thomas Mulligan already long time ago, and therefore it is to his glory - at the beginning of the game.

It is a credit given to the american journalist, humourist and a keen golf player Henry Beard, who overcame many obstacles, periculous situations, risking his own life sometimes and wrote down from existing fragments, scraps and notes a book called "Mulligan's Law" - a book concentrating ideas of Thomas Mulligan, including the greatest, so we can find out what golf is actually about.

Only these ideas are showing the true genius of Thomas Mulligana and exhibit the real beauty of golf as a sport and entertainment.

You can see one of the Thomas Mulligan's pictures in the head of the news.

Source: Ota Doležal, chief editor of GolfCzech