Ready golf is playing your shot when you’re ready, rather than waiting for the strict order dictated by who’s furthest from the hole. It’s the single biggest thing amateur golfers can do to speed up a round, and it’s now written into the Rules of Golf as an accepted way to play, not just a…
In golf, a provisional ball is a second ball you play when your first shot might be lost outside a penalty area or might be out of bounds. It saves you the walk back. Instead of finding your ball gone and trudging back to the tee, you’ve already got a ball in play. The rule…
Golf Rules Explained Golf rules feel intimidating from the outside because the official rulebook runs to hundreds of pages, but almost everything you’ll actually face on a Saturday morning comes down to a handful of situations repeated over and over. This page is the starting point. It covers how golf is scored, the difference between…
Yes. You can play your ball out of a red penalty zone exactly as it lies, no penalty, no questions asked. Most golfers don’t realise that. They see the red stakes, assume the ball is dead, and reach for a drop before they’ve even looked at the lie. A red penalty zone isn’t a no-go…
Making the cut means a player has scored well enough after a set number of rounds to continue playing in the rest of the tournament. Miss it, and your event ends early, regardless of how the rest of the field goes on to perform. How The Cut Actually Works Most professional strokeplay tournaments run over…
Golf courses use coloured stakes to mark different types of trouble around the course. Each colour tells you exactly what kind of relief you’re allowed to take, and getting it wrong can cost you a stroke you didn’t need to lose. What Yellow Stakes Mean Yellow stakes mark a water hazard. If your ball lands…
Match play is a golf format where you play against an opponent hole by hole, not stroke by stroke. Whoever takes fewer shots on a hole wins that hole, and the match is decided by how many holes you’re up, not your total score. How Match Play Actually Works In match play, the number of…
