Club glossary
What Is Match Play in Golf?
A form of play in which a player or side competes against an opponent hole by hole; a match ends when one side leads by more holes than remain.
Match play is a form of golf in which a player or side competes directly against an opponent, hole by hole. Each hole is won by the side with the lower score, or halved if the scores are equal. The match is won when one side leads by more holes than remain to be played. It is defined in Rule 3.2 of the Rules of Golf, and it is the format of most club championships, member-member events and interclub matches.
How a match is scored
The state of a match is expressed in holes "up", "down" or "all square":
- 2 up — the side has won two more holes than its opponent.
- Dormie — a side is up by exactly the number of holes left, so it cannot lose in regulation.
- 3 and 2 — the final result when a side was 3 up with 2 holes to play.
- 1 up — the result when a match goes the full distance and one side wins by one hole.
- Extra holes — if the match is all square after 18, the committee's terms decide whether it continues until one side wins a hole.
Because only the hole result matters, a player may concede a stroke, a hole or the whole match to the opponent at any time — something not allowed in stroke play.
Handicap strokes in match play
For individual match play the handicap allowance is 100%. Each player's Course Handicap™ is calculated for the tees played; the lower player plays off zero, and the higher player receives the difference. Those strokes fall on the holes ranked hardest by the scorecard's stroke index. For four-ball match play the allowance is 90%.
Example
In a club championship bracket, a player with a Course Handicap™ of 4 plays one with a 9. The second player receives 5 strokes, on the stroke-index 1 through 5 holes. On the 7th — stroke index 3 — both make a gross 5, but the higher-handicap player's net 4 wins the hole.
Match play at a club
Clubs run match play as brackets — 16, 32 or 64 players seeded from a stroke-play qualifier or by Handicap Index® — with a deadline for each round. The committee's work is scheduling: players arrange their own matches within the window, results are reported to the golf shop, and the bracket advances. A round robin, by contrast, has every team play every other team.
Related terms
For bracket seeding and scheduling, see how to run a club championship.
In Bubs: the committee seeds a match play bracket, players schedule their matches in the app within each round's deadline, and confirmed results advance the bracket automatically. See tournaments & scoring.