How do you determine, who wins and who loses? By a very simple method of keeping score. Now that you know the nitty-gritty of golf, its time for competition. Fortunately for you, golf is a very user-friendly sport in that scoring in golf is very simple. The number of strokes it takes to put the ball, starting from the tee, into the hole is your score for the hole. It’s as simple as that.
Usually, there are 18 holes and the player with the lowest number of strokes is the winner. This is called stroke play.
Sometimes matches are played on hole-to-hole basis i.e. strokes for every individual hole determines the winner of that hole and after totaling, the winner is determined. The player winning by 2-holes (if he wins two more holes than the opponent) is said to be two holes up and, the loser, two holes down.
The term par indicates the number of strokes required for the ball to reach the cup/hole. It includes the number of shots required to reach the green from the tee, plus two shots on the green. Depending on the conditions, either one, two or three shots are required to get from tee to cup, and the hole marking is done as follows:
- A hole of 250 yards is a 3-par hole.
- Holes of 251 to 470 yards are 4-par holes.
- A hole exceeding the above two is a 5-par hole.