Intergolf Tours & Event - The leading golf event organizer, having organized hundreds of tournaments. Intergolf would like to send to golfers the ways to calculate points in amateur golf competitions - Amateur tournaments commonly applied in Vietnam at this time. By summarizing and explaining in detail and in an easy-to-understand way, we hope that Golfers will somewhat understand how to calculate, so that they can calculate their own Gross and Net points in the tournament they compete in or sometimes organize a group to compete together. 

Popular golf competition formats

1. Stroke Play - Most popular

This is one of the two basic competition and scoring formats besides match play. With this format, players will compete in a round of 18 holes to select the golfer who wins the entire tournament (or Best Gross) is the one with the lowest total number of strokes. Normally, in professional or high-level amateur tournaments, participants will have to compete from three to four rounds.

In some tournaments aimed at amateurs, golfers with the best Net score (total strokes minus handicap) will also receive titles if the tournament is based on the handicap of the player. In addition, this format is sometimes used to classify golfers and reduce the number of participants before entering other formats.

2. Match Play

This is a format often used in 1 vs 1 (or team vs team) tournaments such as the National Match Play Championship, or the VGA Cup National Golf Club Championship. In which two players will compete directly with each other through each hole. Whoever has the lower number of strokes on a hole will win that hole regardless of their total number of strokes. If two players have the same number of strokes, the hole will end in a tie.

After 18 holes, whoever wins the most holes will win the overall match. If the result is still a tie, the match can go into a play-off series through each hole to determine the winner.

3. Foursomes (Alternate Shot)

Foursomes (see also Rule 22 in the Rules of Golf 2019) or “alternate shot” is a form of competition between two groups, each group of two golfers. Each member of the group will alternate shots, with one player teeing off on odd holes while the other tees off on even holes, regardless of the order of play of the previous hole.

While foursomes are often seen in match play with the same scoring, they can also be used in stroke play with the team with the least strokes over all rounds winning. Foursomes in stroke play can be accompanied by a round of four-ball, with many tournaments using this format, such as the World Cup of Golf or the Zurich Classic on the PGA Tour.

Foursomes now have several variations, such as Greensome, Scotch foursome, and Mixed Foursome. Mixed Foursome is similar, but the team will be composed of men and women. In Scotch foursome, both golfers will tee off (still counting as 1 stroke for the team's tee shot) and choose the best ball position, then the unchosen player will hit the second shot.

4. Four-Ball

Similar to foursomes, four-ball (see Rule 23 of the 2019 Rules of Golf) is also played by a group of four golfers with two players on a team. In this format, each golfer plays his own ball and the best score from a member of a team will count as the hole result for that team.

Four-ball, also known as better ball, can also be played as stroke play or match play. Another variation of this format is Best-Ball, where a player competes against a team of two or three golfers, each golfer hitting their own ball (i.e., an individual against three golfers on a team).

5. Stableford

Stableford (see Rule 21 of the 2019 Rules of Golf) is also a popular format for individual or team tournaments. In contrast to stroke play, stableford aims to rank players based on a points system with the winning golfer being the one with the highest score.

Specifically, this points system is regulated by the 2019 Golf Rules in Rule 21 as follows

Bogey – 1 point

Par – 2 points

Birdie – 3 points

Eagle – 4 points

6. Albatross (or Double Eagle) – 5 points

Accordingly, the player or team with the highest score after all rounds will be the winner.

Condor (or Double Albatross, Triple Eagle) – 6 points

7. Par/Bogey (see Rule 21.3 in the 2019 Rules of Golf)

In this format, a player or a team will have to go through the round with a fixed target number of strokes specified by the tournament organizer, usually Par or Bogey. The player will win the hole if he completes that hole with fewer strokes than the target number of strokes. Conversely, if he has more strokes than the target number of strokes, he will lose the hole. At the end of the round, the player will take the total number of holes won minus the total number of holes lost. The golfer or team with the highest difference will be the winner.

8. Scramble

This format is applied to team content, with each team having from 2 to 4 golfers. Entering the match, each member of the team will tee off and together choose the best shot. Then the player with the selected ball will have to mark this position, while the remaining members move their balls close to the mark and drop them within a distance of one club (or 1 scorecard), as long as they are not closer to the hole and improve the ball's position compared to the selected mark.

All will continue to take a second shot and repeat the above process until one member gets the ball into the hole. The team score will be the sum of the best shots selected.

Scramble was used for the QBE Shoutout event on the PGA Tour or the 2020 Perfect Pairs tournament of the Ho Chi Minh City Golf Association. This format has a variation called Texas Scramble, which stipulates the number of required selections for each member's tee shots.

All will continue to take a second shot and repeat the above process until one member makes the ball into the hole. The team score will be the sum of the best shots selected.

9. Ambrose

Ambrose is identical to Scamble, however handicaps are applied as in stroke play with team handicaps calculated by taking the total handicap of the members divided by 8 (for 4-man teams), by 6 (for 3-man teams) or by 4 (for 2-man teams). The team's Net score is the Gross score minus the team handicap.

10. Skins

This is a match-play format where each hole is a “skin” with a different prize money (or score). To win the full prize money for a hole, the player will need to have the lowest score on that hole. In the case of a tie, the “skin” money will be added to the next hole and continue like that until there is a winner. The winner will receive all the accumulated money and start the next hole with the prize returned to the original value.

Skins were quite popular on the PGA Tour during the period 1983-2008, but disappeared for more than 10 years after that and only returned from The Challenge: Japan Skins event on the occasion of the 2019 Zozo Championship. Normally, skin matches are organized by the PGA Tour in November-December at the end of the year and only 4 golfers receive an invitation to participate.

11. Greensome (or Canadian Foursomes)

A variation of foursomes in which two golfers in a team must both tee off and then choose the best shot (which still counts as a stroke for the team's tee shot). The golfer whose ball is chosen plays the second shot, while the other plays the third shot, and so on until the hole is completed.

12. Patsome

In this format, the first 6 holes are played as Four-ball, the middle 6 holes are played as Greensome, and the last 6 holes are played as Foursomes. Sometimes the order of the formats may change.

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