Bowmaker, a couple of questions

[yandabrown]

Just out of idle curiosity:
1) How do you pronounce it? Is it beau as in bow-tie, violin bow, bow bells or bough as in bowsprit, ships bow, bending at the waist as a greeting. Or perhaps something else I never thought of!
2) Why is it called this? It generally seems to be an n-1 competition where n is the number of players and n-1 the number of scores to count on a hole. Presumably there is some reasoning for all this in the dim and distant?

 

[louise_a]

i have always pronounced it as beau, no idea where the name comes from, I took it to be an old name which is rarely used for a team comp where 2 scores count on each hole.

 

[jim8flog]

Bow as in bow and arrow

https://www.scottishgolfhistory.org/news/bower-burgesses-from-william-mayne-to/

From that it is from Bow - maker (as in archery)

 

[yandabrown]

Bow as in bow and arrow

https://www.scottishgolfhistory.org/news/bower-burgesses-from-william-mayne-to/

From that it is from Bow - maker (as in archery)

Thanks very much, that I did not know. I was aware of some link whereby a monarch was quite anti golf as people were not practising their archery (I think that was it).