Competition structures
Parful runs this, with a caveatSudden death
Also called Sudden-death playoff, Extra holes, Playoff holes, Sudden death golf.
Sudden death is a playoff in which tied players keep playing extra holes and the first hole won outright decides it. In match play the match continues from the 19th until someone wins a hole; in stroke play it is the playoff used when a title should be decided on the course rather than by countback.
- Match play
- The match continues from the 19th hole; first hole won wins
- Stroke play
- Tied players replay holes; the lowest score on a hole wins
- On Parful
- Match play extra holes are scored hole by hole
- Leaderboards
- A sudden death setting on a club competition shares the position
- Events
- Playoff tracking is not switchable on today
- Alternative
- Countback decides the tie from the cards
Sudden death in match play
A match that is all square after the last hole is not over. Under the Rules of Golf the match is extended one hole at a time, starting at the first hole of the course (which is why it is called the 19th), and the first player or side to win a hole wins the match. A halved extra hole leads to another. There is no limit; a 36-hole final that finished on the 41st has happened.
Handicap strokes on extra holes fall where they fell in the round: a player who receives a stroke at the first receives it again at the 19th. The result is recorded as a win on the 19th, 20th or wherever the deciding hole was, never as a margin.
Match play sudden death is only a playoff in name. It is the ordinary way an all-square match ends, and clubs that want a decisive result in a knockout write nothing special into the conditions.
Sudden death in stroke play
In stroke play a sudden-death playoff is a committee decision. Tied players replay one or more designated holes and the lowest score on a hole wins; players still level continue. Tournaments use it because a title decided on the course is better television than a title decided on a card, and because the players prefer it.
Clubs almost never use it for a Saturday medal. A hundred players, one tie for the monthly prize and two people who have already showered do not make a playoff. Club conditions specify countback, and reserve sudden death for the championship, where the finalists are known and present. A committee that specifies sudden death should also say what happens if the tied players cannot play: usually countback, sometimes a shared prize.
A playoff does not change the cards. The scores that produced the tie stand as posted for handicap purposes; the playoff only decides the order of finish.
How Parful runs it
On Parful match play, an all-square match continues into extra holes from the 19th and the match engine scores them hole by hole until one side wins a hole. The recorded result names the deciding hole. In a knockout bracket a halved match is never resolved automatically; if the players go back out, the admin records the outcome with sudden death as the method and the winner advances.
On a club stroke play or Stableford competition, sudden death can be chosen as the tiebreaker setting, but the leaderboard cannot compute a playoff from the cards, so a level result shares the position. Choose countback to have ties broken automatically.
The Events product has a sudden-death engine: a tie for a designated position can be held on the leaderboard as pending playoff, playoff holes recorded up to a bound of nine, and the organizer's decision applied as an annotation that never rewrites hole scores. That engine is not reachable from the Events rules settings today, so an Events leaderboard tie is settled by countback or shared placement. Parful does not advertise playoff tracking on Events until the setting ships.
Worked example
A worked example: an all-square match goes to the 20th
A singles match is all square after eighteen. Cal receives one stroke from Dev, at stroke index 1, which is the first hole. The match continues from the 19th, which is the first hole again.
| Hole | Stroke index | Cal gross | Cal net | Dev gross | Hole result | Match |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | 12 | 4 | 4 | 4 | Halved | All square |
| 19 (1st) | 1 | 5 | 4 | 4 | Halved | All square |
| 20 (2nd) | 9 | 3 | 3 | 4 | Cal wins | Cal wins at the 20th |
- The stroke at the 19th applies because the 19th is the first hole played again and Cal receives a stroke there in the round.
- The result is recorded as a win at the 20th, not as 1 up, because the match went beyond the eighteenth.
Common variants
- Aggregate playoff
- Tied players play three or four holes and the lowest total over those holes wins, with sudden death after that if still level, as some championships do. Parful does not track an aggregate playoff.
- Scorecard playoff (countback)
- Deciding the tie from the cards over the back nine, last six, last three and last hole. Available on Parful as the countback tiebreaker and applied automatically.
- Replay
- Playing the whole match again on another day. Available as a match play setting on Parful; the replayed match produces a normal result.
- Chip-off or putt-off
- Deciding a tie with a single shot to a target. Parful does not score it; an admin can record the result as a committee decision.