20+ Other Terms Golfers Have for the Mulligan
Do you call a mulligan a mulligan, or does your group of golf buddies have a different name for this feature of recreational golf? We golfers have our own slang, in this case starting with "mulligan" itself. Here we'll list many other terms golfers use to mean the same thing.
Let's start, though, by defining "mulligan." A mulligan is just a do-over. Hit a terrible shot? Tee up another ball (or drop another ball) and hit it again. Most recreational golfers limit mulligans to strokes played from the teeing ground, and a maximum of one per nine. But there are golfers out there who will announce, "I'm hitting a mulligan!" anywhere on the course, under any circumstances. (You know who you are.)
Mulligans are, obviously, not allowed under the Rules of Golf. But, like, gimme putts, they are very common in rounds among buddies where the rules are applied loosely, if at all.
Other Names for the Mulligan
- Do-over, re-do, replay: The most obvious alternate terms, so obvious that they often appear in definitions of mulligan. Also the most boring alternate names for the mulligan.
- Mully
- Breakfast ball: A mulligan played off the No. 1 tee during a morning round.
- Lunch ball: A mulligan played off the No. 10 tee, or No. 1 for an afternoon round.
- Snack ball
- Charity ball
- Charity second: "Charity ball" and "charity second" derive from the fact that many golf tournaments played as fund-raisers for charity sell extra mulligans to golfers. A golfer can buy, say, three mulligans for use on any shot. Just another way to raise money.
- Sunday ball
- Culligan: What some golfers call a mulligan after hitting their first ball into water. (Culligan is the name of a well-know company that provides water and water purification and softening systems to customers.)
- Aginner: From "hit it again."
- Reflux ball: That ball came back (to the tee) on you.
- Pee ball: Nobody ever accused golfers of being sophisticated. It's a rhyme on, and worse version of, a "tee ball." It's also the second ball you've teed, or your, ahem, tee-tee ball.
- Provisional mulligan: You know that golfer who says, "I'm hitting a mulligan!" and plays a stroke even worse than the first one? And then he says, "Um ... I'll just play the first one"? A "provisional mulligan" is one you discard because it was worse than the original shot.
- Gilligan: Golfers who use gilligans are not, as with mulligans, giving themselves the option to replay a poor stroke. They are giving their opponents the option to make them replay a good shot. Gilligans are, therefore, sort of the opposite of mulligans.
- Finnegan: A mulligan for a mulligan. You blew your first stroke and played a mulligan. Then you blew your mulligan so you're going to hit it again. That's a finnegan.
- Branagan: A mulligan for a finnegan.
- Flanagan: A mulligan for a branagan. Or a mulligan for a mulligan for a mulligan of your original mulligan. If you ever play a flanagan, we recommend switching from golf to pickleball.
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