Competition formats
Parful runs thisPar / Bogey
Also called Par competition, Bogey competition, Against par.
Par / Bogey is match play against the course: on every hole a net score under par wins the hole, a net par halves it and anything over par loses it. Each win is plus 1, each loss minus 1, and the player who finishes the most holes up on the course wins.
- Played as
- Own ball, own card, a match against the course
- Ranked by
- Holes up: wins minus losses, highest wins
- Per hole
- +1 under net par, 0 net par, -1 over net par
- Ties
- Countback on points: back 9, last 6, last 3, last hole
- Recommended allowance
- 100% of Course Handicap™
- Runs on
- Club competitions and events
How Par / Bogey works
Think of the course as an opponent who makes par on every hole. On each hole you compare your net score with par. Under par, you have won the hole and score plus 1. Level, the hole is halved and scores 0. Over par by any amount, you have lost the hole and score minus 1. A double bogey and a nine are the same loss, so once a hole is gone you can pick up.
The result reads like a match: 3 up means three more holes won than lost, 2 down means two more lost than won, all square means level. Historically a bogey competition used bogey rather than par as the target, which is how the format got its double name; today almost every club plays against par and the two names describe the same format.
Where the strokes fall
Net par on a hole is the card par plus the strokes you receive there. With full handicap and a Course Handicap™ of 14 you receive a stroke on stroke index 1 to 14 and play the other four holes off scratch, so a gross bogey on a stroke hole halves it and a gross par on a stroke hole wins it.
The recommended allowance is 100% of Course Handicap. That is the World Handicap System™ figure for a par or bogey competition and it is what the Parful format registry carries: the format is already forgiving on the downside, so there is no case for trimming the strokes.
Try it
Points tables side by side
Pick a table and a result against net par. Net par already includes your strokes on the hole.
| Against net par | Points |
|---|---|
| Albatross (−3) | 1 |
| Eagle (−2) | 1 |
| Birdie (−1) | 1 |
| Par (0) | 0 |
| Bogey (+1) | -1 |
| Double or worse (+2) | -1 |
Par (0)
0 pts
Each hole is won, halved or lost against par.
Settling a tie
Two players who finish the same number of holes up are separated by countback on the hole results: the back nine first, then the last six holes, the last three and the eighteenth, on the final round if there is more than one. The player who was more holes up over the later stretch wins. Still level and the position is shared.
How Parful runs it
Par / Bogey is a competition format on Parful and an individual format on events. It runs on the same points engine as Stableford with a different table: plus 1, 0 and minus 1 instead of 5/4/3/2/1/0. The scorecard places the strokes by stroke index, records each hole as won, halved or lost as scores go in and ranks the leaderboard on the running total with countback applied automatically.
The leaderboard total is the number of holes up or down, so a player at plus 3 is 3 up on the course and a player at minus 2 is 2 down. Like Modified Stableford there is no outing tile: assign a Par / Bogey competition to the outing and the group scorecards score it.
Worked example
A worked example: a 14 handicap on the front nine
Dee has a Course Handicap™ of 14 and plays off the full 14, so she receives a stroke on stroke index 1 to 14. On this front nine that is every hole except 3 and 6.
| Hole | Par | Stroke index | Strokes | Gross | Net | Against net par | Result | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 | 7 | 1 | 5 | 4 | Level | Halved | 0 |
| 2 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 5 | Level | Halved | 0 |
| 3 | 3 | 17 | 0 | 4 | 4 | One over | Lost | -1 |
| 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 5 | One over | Lost | -1 |
| 5 | 4 | 11 | 1 | 4 | 3 | One under | Won | +1 |
| 6 | 3 | 15 | 0 | 3 | 3 | Level | Halved | 0 |
| 7 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 5 | 4 | One under | Won | +1 |
| 8 | 4 | 9 | 1 | 5 | 4 | Level | Halved | 0 |
| 9 | 4 | 13 | 1 | 7 | 6 | Two over | Lost | -1 |
| Front 9 | 36 | 7 | 45 | 38 | 2 won, 3 lost | -1 |
- Hole 9 was a triple bogey and cost exactly the same as the bogey on hole 3. Dee could have picked up after her sixth shot.
- In Stableford the same nine holes would be 2, 2, 1, 1, 3, 2, 3, 2, 0 for 16 points. Par / Bogey compresses every hole to win, halve or lose.
Common variants
- Bogey competition
- The original version, played against bogey rather than par: a net bogey halves the hole and a net par wins it. Parful scores against par; a club that wants the bogey target can give every player one extra stroke on every hole and read the result the same way.
- Par competition, gross
- No strokes; every hole is scored on gross against par. Almost nobody outside the scratch division finishes up. Parful runs it by setting the competition scope to gross.
- Stableford
- The same idea with more room on the upside: 3 for a birdie, 4 for an eagle and a fixed 0 for a bad hole. Parful runs it as its own format and it is the more common choice for a club day.