Parful

Parful library

How golf is played and scored, written down

Every format, every side game, the handicap arithmetic and the structures that settle a competition. Each page gives the rules, a worked example on a real card, the common variants and an honest note on whether Parful scores it for you.

144 terms across four sections. Nothing invented to pad the index.

Search every term and every other name it goes by.

The four sections

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The pages people ask for most

  • Game

    Wolf

    Wolf is a four-player betting game where the tee order rotates and the player teeing off last on each hole, the Wolf, watches the other three drives and then chooses a partner or goes alone. Sides play best ball for the hole.

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  • Format

    Stableford

    Stableford is a points format: each hole earns points against your net par, with 2 for a net par, 3 for a net birdie and 0 for anything worse than a net bogey. The highest total wins, and a disaster hole costs you at most one hole's points.

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  • Handicap

    Course Handicap™

    A Course Handicap™ is your Handicap Index® translated to the tees you are playing today: index times the Slope Rating™ divided by 113, plus the difference between the Course Rating™ and par, rounded to a whole number. It is the number of strokes the course gives you before any format allowance.

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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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  • 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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  • Format

    Scramble

    A scramble is a team format in which every player hits, the team picks the best ball, and everyone plays the next shot from that spot until the ball is holed. The team records one score per hole on one card, and net scoring uses a single team handicap built from each player's Course Handicap™.

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Tools

Do the arithmetic on the page

The library runs the same maths the product runs, so the calculators here are not approximations.

All calculators run the same code Parful runs on real outings.

A to Z

Every term in the library

584 entries, with every other name a term goes by.

0-9

24 entries

A

28 entries

B

42 entries

C

59 entries

D

19 entries

E

15 entries

F

22 entries

G

30 entries

H

28 entries

I

5 entries

J

4 entries

K

3 entries

L

19 entries

M

32 entries

N

17 entries

O

8 entries

P

45 entries

Q

4 entries

R

25 entries

S

91 entries

T

39 entries

V

7 entries

W

17 entries

Y

1 entry

Trademarks

. GHIN® and USGA® are registered marks of the United States Golf Association. World Handicap System™, WHS™, Handicap Index®, Score Differential™, Low Handicap Index™, Course Handicap™, Playing Handicap™, Course Rating™, Bogey Rating™ and Slope Rating™ are trademarks and service marks owned or licensed by the United States Golf Association and The R&A. Ryder Cup® is a trademark of PGA of America and Ryder Cup Europe. Pinehurst® is a trademark of Pinehurst, LLC. Parful is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any of these organizations. Game names such as Stableford, Nassau, Wolf, Vegas and Skins are used descriptively.