Many have wondered what “arf” means. Actually, nothing, but in MBF it has evolved into the MBF greeting since the mid-1970s.

Under the leadership of Göran Paul, the MBF juniors of that era, Thomas Hallbäck, Berndt Johansson, Anders Lundström and Björn Ådahl, started using “arf” as a polite way of saying “sorry” when something wasn’t going so well: a sorry ball to an opponent, a missed shot from an open position, a narrow loss, etc. A concise word to describe when “it didn’t go quite right”.

Many MBF juniors at the time widely read the English and Swedish-language MAD satirical magazine, which used “weird” as exclamations in various situations (and in English “arf” means, for example, a dog’s bark).

Quite quickly, “arf” developed into a greeting in MBF that could be used in many different MBF contexts and became a word that created its own internal identity, the meaning of which only those in the club understand. Even though it means nothing.

Argh!