Pardon me for a moment as I ramble on a topic that quite possibly doesn't matter to anyone else, anywhere else in the world. However, as a fan of semantics, I have to take the chance and find out.
"Par" is a term most famous for golf, but it's worked its way into many aspects of life, including bowling. In golf, par is the number of strokes within which a golfer should be able to put the ball in the hole. If a golfer makes a three on a par four, he's considered one under par.
In bowling, there's no official par as there is in golf, but pro bowlers (and most bowlers aware of the term) consider par to be 200 for a game of bowling.
Say you bowl a 210. Are you 10 over par or 10 under par? Mathematically, you're 10 over, as 210 is 10 more than 200. This seems to be the most common use among bowling circles, too. However, in golf, being over par is a bad thing. Shouldn't the same be true in bowling? As an avid golfer as well as bowler, I say yes. If I bowl a 210, I'm 10 under par. If I bowl a 190, I'm 10 over par. Makes no sense mathematically, but perfect sense logistically.
A simpler way to do this without pitting language and mathematics against each other would be to say "better than par" or "worse than par." A three on a par four in golf is better than par. A 201 in bowling is better than par.
What about you? Which is over and which is under? Or do you not concern yourself with par at all?
Comments
Interesting question, Jef. I don’t play golf. Perhaps this helps to explain why I don’t talk about “par” and “bowling” in the same breath. Yet, I know many people who do bowl and play golf, and they don’t talk about “par bowling” either, despite Tom Kouros’s semi-famous book of that title. The fact is, I don’t hear anybody in my neck of the woods talking about bowling under or over par.
However, if one were to use that expression, I agree that saying “better than par” and “worse than par” is better than saying “over par” and “under par” for the reason you state.
Thanks for the comment, Steve. You mentioned neither you nor anyone around you talks about par bowling or scores related to par. Same goes for me. I hear it a couple times a year on PBA telecasts, and extremely rarely at my local center (usually said by a guy who wants everyone to know how good he is, so he uses a term like “par” to talk about his great scores).
My post on this topic is more than I’ve ever thought about par and bowling. I wonder if it’s more prominent in some areas of the world than others? Obviously not in yours or mine.