"Buddy" Mulligan; however, no connection with these figures is recorded until several decades after the term entered common use.
[3] The United States Golf Association (USGA) cites three stories espousing that the term derived from the name of a Canadian golfer, David B. Mulligan (1869–1954).
He called it a "correction shot", but his companions thought it more fitting to name the unorthodox practice after him, and that David Mulligan then brought the concept from Canada to Winged Foot, a golf club in the U.S. A second version has the extra shot allowed for Mulligan due to his being jumpy and shaky after a difficult drive over the Victoria Bridge to the course.
The final version of the David Mulligan story gives him an extra shot after having overslept and having rushed to get ready to make the tee time.
"Buddy" Mulligan, a locker room attendant at Essex Fells Country Club in New Jersey.
Once they agreed and the round finished, Mulligan began to exclaim proudly for months to the members in his locker room, how he had gotten an extra shot from the duo.
Mulligan was located in the 1970s at the Lyons, New Jersey veterans administration hospital, helping with their golf facility.
In his July 22, 1970, column in the Myrtle Beach Sun News, the semi-retired Des Sullivan wrote of finding Mulligan and the history behind the term.
[citation needed] In a 2017 blog post, Peter Reitan cast doubt on the eponymous mulligan etymology theories, pointing out that they conflicted with the (then-recent) 1931 antedating in the dictionary.
He suggested that the term originated instead with "Swat Mulligan", a fictional baseball player with extraordinary batting skills who appeared in the New York Evening World during the 1910s.
[3] The 1931 Detroit Free Press citation has been suggested to represent a transitional form, in that the usage involves both a do-over and a powerful shot: All were waiting to see what Byrd would do on the 290-yard 18th, with a creek in front of the well-elevated green.
This practice is disallowed entirely by strict rules in formal play and players who attempt it or agree to let it happen may be disqualified from sanctioned competitions.
[7] As mulligans are not covered by strict rules – except to prohibit them – there are many variations of the practice among groups of players who do allow them in friendly games.
In Magic: The Gathering, a player may declare a mulligan after drawing their initial hand at the beginning of each game.
Several U.S. states have so-called sore-loser laws specifically designed to prevent such failed candidates from appearing on the ballot in the general election in such a manner.
In jurisdictions using the Westminster system or single-member districts, mulligan candidates are a fairly common occurrence, especially in cases where the mulligan candidate alleges a nomination contest was lost due to unfair electoral practices or was disqualified by a former party without reasonable cause.
This practice is rare today, but was popular with sponsors at the height of the credit boom in 2006-07, allowing them to postpone the date at which they needed to start negotiating a restructuring with lenders.