Sweep

How a sweep works

Before the round the organizer sets what each pot is worth and who is in. Every player in the sweep puts in the same entry, which is simply the pots added up: £1 for the front nine, £1 for the back nine, £1 overall and 50p on each of four par 3s is £5 a player.

Each pot is its value times the number of players in it. With twelve players a £1 pot is worth £12 and a 50p par 3 is worth £6. A course with five par 3s adds another 50p to the entry; nobody has to work it out.

Nobody plays differently. The front nine, back nine and overall come straight off the cards on the basis the organizer chose for that pot, and nearest the pin is marked by the groups on the green.

Who wins each pot

• check_circleFront 9 and back 9: the best score over those nine holes. A player has to finish every hole of the nine to win it.
• check_circleOverall: the best score over the round. On a nine-hole round there is no back nine pot, and the entry is the pots that can be played.
• check_circleNearest the pin: the closest tee shot on that par 3 from a player in the sweep. The marker method is enough; a measured distance is optional.
• check_circleA player who stops partway through still counts in the size of every pot, but cannot win a pot they did not finish.

Ties and unwon holes

The organizer picks the tie rule before the round. Shared means tied players split the pot equally. Countback means the club tiebreaker decides it, looking at the last six, last three and last hole of that nine; if the players are still level, they share. Two tee shots measured exactly level on a par 3 always share.

When nobody in the sweep is on the green at a par 3, that pot is unwon. The organizer chooses where it goes: into the overall pot, or shared equally among everyone in the sweep.

Where the money goes

A sweep is settled among the players. Parful works out who won each pot and how much, and keeps no payments, so nothing about a sweep appears in a club's accounts. A sweep never counts towards an Order of Merit or any other standing.

Worked example

A worked example: twelve players at £5, all on Stableford

Front 9, back 9 and overall are £1 each on Stableford points, nearest the pin is 50p on each of the four par 3s, ties go to countback and an unwon par 3 goes into the overall pot. Twelve players are in, so each £1 pot is £12 and each par 3 is £6.

• infoWith ties set to shared, Mike and Jamie would split the back nine £6 each, and Jamie would finish on £30.
• infoWith unwon set to shared, the 7th's £6 would go 50p to each of the twelve players instead of into the overall.

Common variants

Places within a pot

Some societies pay second and third on the overall. A Parful sweep has one winner per pot.

Rollover

An unwon pot carried to next week. Parful works out each round on its own; carrying money forward is up to the society.

Two rounds in a day

Each round is its own sweep with its own entry.

Related terms

• Game

  Closest to the pin

  Closest to the pin is a one-hole skill contest, played on a par 3, where the tee shot that finishes nearest the hole wins. The distance is measured in feet and inches from the ball to the hole, the nearest measurement leads, and the leader at the end of the day takes the prize.

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• Game

  Birdie Pool

  A Birdie Pool is a whole-field side pot where every entrant pays a buy-in and the pot is shared out by birdies made: each gross birdie is one share, the player with the most birdies takes the biggest slice, and a club can count an eagle as two birdies.

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• Game

  Skins

  Skins is a golf betting game in which each hole is worth one skin and the skin goes to the player with the outright lowest score on that hole. When two or more players tie for low, nobody wins the skin and it carries over, so the next hole is worth two skins, until someone wins a hole outright.

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• Game

  Nassau

  A Nassau is three golf bets in one round: the front nine, the back nine and the full eighteen. Each bet is settled on its own, so a player can win the front, lose the back and still take the overall. In Parful each leg goes to the lowest total, gross or net, and a tie splits the leg.

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• Competition

  Countback

  Countback settles a tied stroke play or Stableford competition without a playoff: compare the tied players over the back nine, then the last six holes, then the last three, then the eighteenth. The first stretch that separates them decides it.

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Sweep questions