Golf is a draw-and-discard game where, like the sport, low scores win. Each player has a small grid of mostly face-down cards and swaps them out over the round, trying to end up with cheap cards and matching columns. You never see everything you own until the end. Nine rounds - "holes" - take about 30 minutes.
What You Need
- Players: 2-8. Add a second deck above four players.
- Deck: One standard 52-card deck.
- Extras: Pen and paper - the score sheet is the whole point.
Key Terms
- Layout: Your grid of 6 cards, arranged as 2 rows of 3, so it has three columns of two.
- Hole: One round. A full game is nine of them.
- Stock and discard: The face-down draw pile and the face-up pile beside it.
- Matched column: Two cards of the same rank in the same column, which cancel out to zero.
Setup
- Deal 6 cards face down to each player, arranged in a 3-wide, 2-deep grid in front of them.
- Put the rest face down as the stock and turn one card face up beside it as the discard pile.
- Before play begins, each player turns any two of their six cards face up. Leave the other four face down - you do not get to look at them.
How to Play
Play passes clockwise, starting to the dealer's left. On your turn, do exactly one of these:
- Take the top discard and swap it for any card in your layout, face up or face down. The card you replace goes face up on the discard pile.
- Draw from the stock, then either swap it into your layout the same way, or discard it straight away.
- If you discard a stock card without using it, you may instead flip one of your own face-down cards face up.
Cards you swap in always land face up, so your layout gradually reveals itself.
The round ends the moment any player's six cards are all face up. Everyone else gets one final turn, then all layouts are turned over and scored.
Scoring & Winning
Card values:
| Card | Points |
|---|---|
| King | 0 |
| 2 | -2 |
| Ace | 1 |
| 3 through 10 | face value |
| Jack, Queen | 10 |
Then the special rule: a column of two matching ranks scores 0, cancelling both cards regardless of what they are worth. A pair of queens in one column is worth nothing instead of 20.
Add up your layout, write it on the score sheet, and deal the next hole. After nine holes, the lowest total wins.
Example
Your layout shows a queen with a face-down card beneath it. You draw a queen from the stock and swap it into that face-down slot, making a matched column worth 0 instead of 10 plus whatever was hiding there.
Variations
- Four-card golf: a 2x2 layout for a much shorter game, popular with children.
- Nine-card golf: a 3x3 grid where matching rows and columns score zero.
- Jokers: add two jokers worth minus 2, and make 2s worth 2.
- Six-card with knocking: you may end the round deliberately once you think you are ahead.
Tips for New Players
- Kings are free and 2s are better than free. Take either one whenever it appears on the discard pile.
- A matched column is worth more than two low cards. If you have a queen showing, a second queen is a 20-point swing.
- Do not flip your last card early. Ending the round gives everyone else only one more turn, which is powerful when you are ahead and terrible when you are not.