What's a snowman in golf?

Why it's called a snowman

It's that simple. Write an 8 on a scorecard and it looks like a snowman: a small circle on top of a bigger one. Add a carrot nose in your head and you're done. Nobody knows who said it first. It's one of those words that spread from golf cart to golf cart until everybody used it.

The snowman doesn't care what the par was. An 8 on a par 3, a par 4 or a par 5 is still a snowman. What changes is how bad it is.

A short history of golf's scoring words

The snowman is the newcomer in a family of strange golf words. Most of them have a story, and a few of those stories are probably a little taller than the truth. Here's how they're usually told.

Par: borrowed from the money men

"Par" comes from finance, where a stock "at par" is at its normal, expected value. Golf picked the word up in the late 1800s to mean the score a good player should make on a hole. It became the standard yardstick in the early 1900s.

Bogey: named after a ghost

In 1890s England, golfers kept score against an imaginary opponent who played every hole steadily. They named him after the Bogey Man from a popular song of the day, and later he was promoted to "Colonel Bogey." Back then, "bogey" meant the target score on a hole. American golfers settled on "par" for that number. Over time "bogey" slid down to mean one over par, where it lives today.

Birdie: "That was a bird of a shot"

The story goes that around the turn of the 1900s, at the Atlantic City Country Club in New Jersey, a player hit a great approach and called it "a bird of a shot." "Bird" was American slang for anything excellent. The group started calling one under par a "birdie," and the name stuck.

Eagle and albatross: bigger birds

Once a birdie was one under, two under needed a bigger bird. Americans picked the eagle, their national bird. Three under got an even rarer bird, the albatross, which some golfers call a double eagle. Golf names its good scores after birds and its bad ones after ghosts and snowmen. Draw your own conclusions.

Even the legends build snowmen (and bigger)

If your 8 is still bugging you, these might help. Each of these was made by a golf legend at a tournament, with the cameras rolling.

None of these was a snowman. They went right past 8. So the next time you build one, remember you're in good company, and at least you stopped at 8.

Does a snowman count for your handicap?

Not all of it, if you use the official World Handicap System. For handicap purposes, the most you count on any hole is net double bogey: double bogey plus any handicap strokes you get on that hole. On a par 4, a golfer who gets one stroke on that hole would count no more than a 7 toward their handicap, even if the card says 8.

The idea is that one bad hole shouldn't wreck your handicap. Your buddies will still bring it up for the rest of the season.

One note on the Pete Scorecard: its handicap is unofficial and counts every stroke on the card, snowmen and all. It doesn't cap holes the way the official system does, so a round with a snowman in it can nudge it a little higher than an official handicap.

How to dodge the snowman

Most snowmen aren't built with one bad swing. They're built with three bad decisions in a row. Pete's rules:

1. Take your medicine. In the trees? Punch it back to the fairway. The hero shot through the one-foot gap is how a 5 turns into an 8.
2. Hit the club you trust off the tee. A 7 iron in the fairway beats a driver in the creek, every time.
3. Never chase a bad shot with a mad one. Take a breath before the next swing. Anger has never once improved a golf swing.
4. Aim for the fat part of the green. The pin tucked behind the bunker isn't your problem today.
5. Know your real distances. Most snowmen start with a club that comes up short. If you think your 7 iron goes 150, check it with the Yardage Reality Check.
6. When in doubt, pick it up. Lots of casual groups play to a max score per hole, like double par. Your pace of play, and the group behind you, will thank you.

Snowmen in the Pete Scorecard

Most scorecard apps want you to forget your snowmen. The Pete Scorecard keeps track of them for you:

• Every 8 is marked in red on your card, so there's no hiding it.
• The snowman counter keeps your season total, plus your streak of rounds without one.
• Snowman of the Month on the Buddies leaderboard. You don't want this trophy, but somebody always wins it.
• "Snowman pays" in Settle the Bet. Make an 8, pay the group. Nothing improves focus like a dollar on the line.
• Your nemesis holes on the season dashboard show which hole keeps building your snowmen.

Snowman FAQ

Is a snowman a quadruple bogey?

Only on a par 4. An 8 is a quintuple bogey on a par 3 and a triple bogey on a par 5. Any 8 is a snowman, whatever the par.

Is a 9 or a 10 a snowman?

Not exactly. A snowman is an 8, because of the shape. Past that, golfers mostly call it "a big number" and stop talking about it.

Does a snowman count for my handicap?

In the official World Handicap System, you count no more than net double bogey on any hole. The Pete Scorecard's unofficial handicap uses the same best-of-your-last-20 math, but it counts every stroke you take, snowmen included. So after a blowup hole it can run a little higher than an official handicap would.

Do pros make snowmen?

All the time, and some go way past 8. Arnold Palmer made a 12, Tom Weiskopf and Sergio Garcia made 13s at the Masters, and Kevin Na made a 16 on a par 4.

What's the opposite of a snowman?

A birdie, or better yet an eagle. On the Pete Scorecard, every birdie gets circled and counted too, so the good stuff shows up as loud as the snowmen.

IF YOU KNOW, YOU GOLF.