Scoring

The idea of the game of golf is to send the ball from a starting place (the tee) swinging as many times as it takes you, until you get it to the green and into the hole or cup. The object of the game is to do this in as few strokes as possible. You count every swing, including penalty strokes and air shots.

Each hole has a number, or score listed for it, which is called Par. This is the standard of excellence golfers shoot for when they begin to play golf. Your scores may be much higher than par when you first start, but will go down as you practice and improve your skills. Depending on the length of a hole, a hole may be rated as Par 3, Par 4 or Par 5 and although you may not be shooting for par, you can use the Par standard to help measure your own skill on different holes.

Stableford points is a type of scoring where points are awarded at each hole as follows:

Nett bogey (one over par) – 1 point
Nett par – 2 points
Nett birdie (one under par) – 3 points
Nett eagle (two under par) – 4 points
Nett albatross (three under par) – 5 points
The winner is the competitor who scores the highest number of points.

Here is an example of a typical 18-hole scorecard, which covers scoring for different types of competition.



The hole number is self explanatory.

The column marked 'yards' represents the length of the hole.

The 'index' indicates the relative difficulty of each hole, with 1 generally being the hardest, (a player with a handicap of 18 will receive shots on 1-18, a handicap of 9 on 1-9 and so on).

The 'Par' column is the number of shots an expert aims to have for each hole and is usually determined by length.

When marking a scorecard, players swap scorecards, placing their own scores in the 'markers' column and the players scores for who they are marking in Column A. Most beginners will find that they score over Par at each hole, but set yourself targets against Par and you then have a score to beat next time.