Almost everyone has seen or at least heard of the movie "The Birds", directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1962. For those who haven't seen it, let's remember that it was a suspense and horror film.

It tells the story of the strange behavior of the birds, until the point where the town of Bodega Bay, a place near Santa Rosa, on the California coast, is engulfed in chaos with explosions and attacks by the birds of the area.

However, this bad relationship between humans and birds, as depicted in the film, does not occur with the game of golf and the names of birds, but quite the opposite.

All of us who play golf are very satisfied when our good game is rewarded with a Birdie or an Eagle. Needless to say, achieving an Albatross or a Condor would mean so much to us.

The use of English language terms

Without a doubt, if there's one thing that characterizes the game of golf, it's the immense number of terms used, and some of the most common are in English, without a direct translation into Spanish to date. Examples include:

– What a great driver I hit on this hole.

– I've had such bad luck. I've made another triple bogey.

– I'm hesitating between using the “pitching” or the “sand” to get the ball out of the rough.

– Either this green is terrible, nobody can sink a putt.

All of them are in everyday use among us, but if there are some English terms that we love to use, they are birdie, eagle, albatross and condor.

Birdie, Eagle, Albatross and Condor

I'm sure you're already thinking that these are all bird names. But why do we use them?

Interestingly, these terms that we will refer to did not originate in any field in Scotland, or England, or even in any country in Europe, but rather they originated in the United States of America at the end of the 19th century.

The term “birdie” means scoring one under par (−1) and was coined in 1899 at the Northfield Country Club in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The story goes that on a round that year, three golfers—George Crump (who later built Pine Valley Golf Club), William Poultney Smith (a founding member of Pine Valley Golf Club), and his brother Ab Smith—were playing together when Crump's second shot struck a bird in flight, sending the ball just inches from the hole.

This prompted his playing partners to exclaim that the score of three strokes on a par four was a "birdie." Before long, everyone at the club began using the term, and it quickly spread and was adopted by golfers all over the United States.

Once the term "birdie" was standardized for a score of one under par (-1), the practice of assigning names to larger birds continued. Thus, a score of -2 is called an "eagle," a score of -3 an "albatross," and finally, for the almost impossible score of -4, we have the word "condor.".

Interesting facts about the condor in the Andes and in golf

The Andean condor is a bird species native to South America. It is large, with a wingspan exceeding that of a human. As mentioned earlier, in golf, a condor is a shot four strokes under par. Therefore, it can only be achieved on par 5 or par 6 holes (there are few, but some par 6s do exist).

The first one occurred in 1962, 59 years ago, at the Hope Country Club in Arkansas, USA. A player named Larry Bruce achieved a hole-in-one on a par 4 dogleg hole.

The newspapers recount that, on his first shot, Bruce sent his ball over some trees to avoid having to play the full course with the natural curve of the hole (about 439 meters) and thus reach the green directly. And he hit the ball with such force and such good luck, why not say it, that it ended up going into the hole.

A similar strategy led Shaun Lynch to achieve the second "condor" in history in 1995. It was at the Teign Valley Golf Club in Christow, England, on a hole also with a dogleg of 453.5 meters.

Lynch struck the ball with a 3-iron over some 7-meter-high bushes to clear the left-hand curve of the hole. His ball landed on a downward slope and rolled straight up to the flagstick, finally sinking into the hole. A plaque commemorating Shaun's feat was placed there.

I'm sure you've never shot a condor or an albatross, but have you ever shot an eagle? Me neither, but let's start with the smaller birds, a good old-fashioned birdie. The larger birds will undoubtedly come with time and, of course, with practice. Or at least that's what I hope.

By Vicente Juan Olmos Blázquez

National Judge-Referee