Today you’re playing for points. You’ll be playing Stableford and you’ll be scoring Stableford. (Consider that these are discrete but related acts.)
You know your handicap on this course is going to be eight, so you circle those eight hardest holes on your card. Those circles are good news—each one is an extra chance to score. That awareness is part of the act of scoring Stableford of course, but they also inform how you play. That is, they are part of the predicate strategic corpus that you muster before a line, club, or shot is selected.
Hole One
The first hole is a gently rolling par four, not long but not short either, with a yawning and receptive green. The hole is too easy to get help, so it’s playing for you as a par four. That tells you from tee how many points you can potentially score. And definitionally you’ll score when the ball comes to rest in the hole. If you can get that to happen in four strokes you’ll get two points for your par. If you can do it in three—birdie—you’ll get three points. Eagle? Four points. Not going to happen, but what if you somehow shot an ace from here? That would be five points.
What about a bogie? Yes, you’ll get a point for that. But that’s all. As soon as your fifth stroke comes to rest somewhere in the world outside the cup, the hole is over. It’s over because you can’t score anymore. There’s no need to strike the ball again. Well, where can we next score? That’s right—at the next tee box there will be another opportunity—think of each hole as a possession. We need not score on every one to do well.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves because we’re still standing on the tee. So let’s play the hole. Your drive is clean—and it feels nice to have that first impact shoot from the now and into the past—and to enjoy the ball’s flight through the sky. It fades right, falls, bounces and starts to roll toward the fringe but you’ve kept the fairway.
Shot two is 170 yards out and over not one but two traps. Now you have more information on score to inform your strategy. The pin is friendly and the carry is forced but you know everything will shoot right and that it’s hard to miss the green. At most you can score four points now but that’s not at all your play. You’re not even thinking about the pin placement particularly. You just want to make a green in regulation and then get putting.
Your thinned impact results in a respectable miss. The ball hits the green, bounces through it and runs in the collection area above the green. You know from experience that it’ll be a putt from there.
As you stand over the ball for your third stoke, you’re thrilled about this putt, even if you’re off the green by almost a yard. Why? Because this is where you can get caught playing like the pros do. Now and then you’ll roll a deadly putt like this one—that should be about 60 feet, no more—that looks just like you see on TV. That has most certainly never been the case with any iron or wood in your bag. And knowing how mortally difficulty TV-grade golf is, it’s nice to know from here on our it’ll be something where you can summon real skill and really score. What score? Well you know exactly what you’re putting for here: for three points if you can get it in the cup. To say simply what we all know: putting to score is fun.
Despite all that, you’re not putting to kill it and you’ll be OK with any miss that gives you a tap-in for two points. And you know unless you really make an unforced error here you won’t end the inning with a goose egg—you’re perhaps going to start a streak of positive numbers on your card. How long can that streak go? Have you scored for points in 18 straight holes in a round? Nope. You’ve taken that particular achievement to the boring par-three 16th on this course. Maybe today you’ll summit that particular personal Stableford Everest.
The putt goes and rolls more or less in obeisance to your game plan: you end up on the low side of the hole, but with a pro-style three foot leave long.
Or is it four feet? Or even a bit more? It looks harder the closer you get. This one takes some careful reading. You know what the stakes are: this is for two points. You take your time and no one says boo. Did I mention you were playing with others? You are. But they don’t bother you because they know you’ve got a par putt. No one rushes in to give you the gimmie. You know gimmies are a kindness of a sort, and sometimes the order of the day, but today you are playing for points. And points means playing strongly to the rules. There’s no need to round off the edges of the rule book to speed the game. Your format is speedy by nature. Not to mention the sound of the ball clattering to rest in the cup is a nice one. You really want to hear it.
You roll and you do hear it. You write a two on your card for the opening hole. You score on the possession!
Hole Two
You walk to the second tee with mixed emotions. It’s nice to have a good number on your card but you know the forced carry on two is a bear. If you can make that you have a good chance to score on this shorter par four. And you still don’t have help so you have only five strokes to get a point. Being honest with yourself, you know your muscle memory will likely deliver a slice. A baby slice on this sharp dogleg left isn’t good news but it’s not deadly. It just means you’ll hit a six iron in instead of a wedge. A big number won’t be likely, but you’ve scored from all over this fairway.
Since you did not make time for the slice, it kindly stopped for you and it is of plantain proportions. The ball is bending toward the tree line and won’t quit. Even worse than the silence of your group is the silence of the woods; you didn’t hear a sound. It’s likely deep under last fall’s pine straw and almost certainly unfindable. Gulp.
Playing for points gives you options here. You know you’ll be unlikely to find that bad boy. You could play a provisional in case you can’t find the first ball and you do just that, bunting an ugly drive just high and far enough to make short grass. Everyone else hits and you get out ahead of the group because you know you have a decision to make. The provisional is lying three. That would mean you’d have to make a true up-and-down from a good 180 out to score a point. Not likely to happen. You really want to find that first ball.
You conduct a quick search and find only nature. You choose to save your frustration and call off the search—well it was actually only you looking—everyone else is absorbed in their game—and walk back to the provisional. The lie is less than ideal and you have no expectations, so naturally you make complete contact and feel a satisfyingly high smash-factor as your longest iron sends the ball effortlessly skyward. It is a beautiful flight and it actually makes the number but drifts and catches the trap greenside right.
The march to the green isn’t fun. You really wanted to keep playing competently. Now you’re quite likely to draw a goose egg here and the only way to avoid that is to drop a canny sand shot right to the cup for a score. It’s worth a shot. You take your most lofted wedge with you into the sandy coffin. Like death, we face a sand trap alone, there is never company. The lie is friendly and fluffy. Your energy since the second tee shot has wilted a bit but you are still recruited. A death march this isn’t. The way to get that one point is crisply defined: get up out of this sand in one swing and have it roll in for a chance.
Because of the clarity of the task you know in your heart the swing you summon has more power and agility than if you were playing medal golf. You know how stroke golf goes. You know if you skull a sand shot in that format, you’ll be scratching around in the woods again. You know if you take too much sand you could have yet another shot from the same bunker. Even if you make the green you know that medal golf and the generations upon generations of golfers before you—all of those faded signatures on cards behind glass on the walls of clubs—the rules of medal golf dictate that you pull your putter and hit one, two, or possibly more shots for some big hideous number. You know in that format you’re not allowed to stop until you stop failing and you know it will most certainly be boring.
Boring because, staying with the stroke mindset for a moment, from here you know a treble-bogie is the odds-on favorite. And that’s with a competent sand shot and a good putt that lips out. Putting for a triple bogie isn’t fun for anyone, and watching it is even worse, which is why your partners will try to accelerate things by “giving you” that last putt. Yes they too are mortal beings and they don’t have time to let you close the circle and hear the ball meet cup.
Returning to our game, and it is a different game, you swing free and well and with no fear of what will happen next. You knew that because you were playing for points and none of those hideous scenarios would play out. Even if you didn’t get the ball out of the trap you would then be, by rule, required to pick the ball up, tidy the trap, and dust yourself off for the next possession, only moments away.
Your swing knew all of that too, which is why the ball describes a satisfying arc from sand to green and lands hard, rolling and rolling, finally resting well away from the hole. But the leave is unimportant. You have made everything you could of the possession. You have played a format codified by the Royal and Ancient and you have tested your skill with flawless adherence to the rules.
Hole Three
The third hole is short on the card: only 360 yards but it plays up the hill and back toward the clubhouse. The tee shot is trivial, but the green is the most undulated on the course. You get a stroke here. From the tee, there is a theoretical max score of six points, because it plays as a par 5 for you.
Your drive puts you in the right spot for today’s pin, the ball finds the fairway left. You have a direct line to the pin on the uppermost tier. You don’t even need to put the ball in the air, so you don’t. You putt a seven iron and the ball answers: climbing into the green complex and onto the highest tier by the pin. You didn’t score there but you’ve knocked it close.
This putt is makable and for four points, a big opportunity, but you are above the hole and putting back down the slope to the lower tiers. Too much power here could mean the four point opportunity might drop to two or even one point. You decide to go for the points now rather than get caught babying the ball. The putt is confident and true and you card a four.
And Beyond
You pause to reset yourself as you walk under a canopy of pines to the next tee. And the reset works, far better than when playing stoke golf because each possession is truly a thing unto itself. Your scorecard reads 2/0/4.
Nothing that happens on the next hole can cast a shadow on this accumulation. Unlike medal golf, there is no specter of “blowup” erasure. Each hole—each possession—lives on its own. Is that easier than medal golf? Almost certainly. Does it allow you to play recruited golf, faithful to the rules, and testing of your ability, and to do all of the above briskly, even when your game falters? Almost certainly.
And we know when we falter, there will be only an economy of effort and a desire to test your complete game on the next hole, where another possession begins. You might even be recruited enough to shoot your personal best with the holes that remain today. How many points is that? This is your first game playing for points, so you know you will shoot it today.