The Two Types of Games

Golf can be played in many different types of ways. But the two most common ones are stroke play and match play. Most of the competitions are done in either of the two. The other types of games are usually played for fun in friendly competitions.

Stroke play is usually played the most. In stroke play the players count their strokes and the one with the least strokes wins. Sometimes bogey points are used to calculate the results in stroke play. There is more about bogey points in the "Calculating Your Handicap Section".

The second popular game in golf is match play. In match play each hole is a seperate match and the winner of the hole gets a plus point and the loser gets a minus point, if you tie both get zero points. In the end the one with the most points wins. The disadvanatage of match play is that only 2 players (one group in match play) can compete against each other at once, unlike in stroke play everyone's strokes can be compared in the end to find out the winner. The match play rules differ a bit from the normal rules.