match play

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2009)

This article contains instructions, advice, or how-to content. The purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts, not to train. Please help improve this article either by rewriting the how-to content or by moving it to Wikiversity or Wikibooks. (September 2009)

Match play is a scoring system for golf in which a player or team earns points for each hole in which they have bested their opponents; this is as opposed to stroke play, in which the total number of strokes is counted. In the world of men's professional golf, a small number of notable match play tournaments use the match play scoring system.

Scoring system

Unlike stroke play, in which the unit of scoring is the stroke, in match play the unit of scoring is the hole. On each hole, the most that can be gained is one point. Golfers play as normal. The golfer with the lowest score on a given hole receives one point. If the golfers tie, then the hole is halved.

Match play scores of a game in progress are kept with a running tally. At the start of a match, the score is "all square" or tied. The score is then recorded in terms of one player's lead over another player. For example, if Player A has won 3 holes, Player B has won 1 hole and they have halved 2 (or any number of) holes, Player A is said to be leading, "2-up" (3 holes won minus 1 hole lost).

A team that is leading by N holes with N holes remaining is said to be "dormie-N", or simply "dormie", meaning that they need one more halved hole to win the match (or alternately, that the other team must win all the remaining holes outright in order to halve the match).

The final score of a match play event is listed in one of three ways:

• 1 hole up or 2 holes up, meaning that all 18 holes were played and that the winner was ahead by either one or two holes (holes is often omitted leaving 1 up or 2 up.)
• M and N, where M is either one or two greater than N, meaning that (18 - N) holes were played, and the winning player was leading by M holes. This indicates that the winner was ahead by more holes than the number of holes left to play, so the match does not need to be finished. The greatest margin of victory a player can have in an 18-hole match is 10 and 8, which occurs when he wins the first 10 holes. For example, if the score of a match is "4&2", then the pair played 16 holes and the margin of victory was 4 holes.
• at the Xth hole, where X is greater than 18. This indicates that the players were all square after 18 holes and played sudden death for (X - 18) more holes until one player won a hole outright. In the Ryder Cup and other similar team events, the match is not finished this way, and the teams each receive a half point. For tournament play this would not be suitable.

Tournaments featuring match play

Today, there are few professional tournaments that use match play. They include the biennial Ryder Cup played by two teams, one representing the USA and the other representing Europe; the biennial Presidents Cup for teams representing the USA and International (non-European) players; the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship; and the older Volvo World Match Play Championship, an invitational event which is now part of the European Tour. Formerly, the PGA Championship, one of the majors, used match play, but it changed to a stroke play event in 1958.

Women's professional golf had no event directly comparable to the Accenture Championship until the HSBC Women's World Match Play Championship was introduced in 2005. It also has an event directly analogous to the Ryder Cup, the Solheim Cup. In addition, women's golf now has an event broadly analogous to the Presidents Cup in the Lexus Cup.^[1] The U.S. Amateur Championships for both men and women are conducted with two rounds of stroke play to cut the field to 64, and then proceed to a single-elimination match play tournament. All elimination matches are 18 holes except for the final, which is 36 holes.

Strategy

Golfers can employ a slightly different strategy during a match play event, since the scoring is different. The situation in the match and the outcome of each shot already played on a hole will both be taken into account. On the whole match play encourages more aggressive play, especially at the professional level, where a par is not usually good enough to win a hole. Since a very poor result for a hole is no worse than a slightly-below-average result when playing against an opponent with an average score, it often makes sense to accept the higher risk connected with aggressive tactics. However, in some circumstances players will be especially cautious in match play. For instance, one may choose to play more conservatively if the opponent has hit a poor tee shot or is otherwise under pressure to compensate a poor start on a particular hole, reasoning that there is a good chance to win the hole with an average result.

Alternative forms of match play

There is a format of match play called "Irish match play" in which 3 or 4 individuals may compete against each other. A points system is assigned where as an outright win on a hole for a single player constitutes 2 points, a half of the hole for 2 or more players is equal to a single point. This format allows golfers to enjoy the format of hole-by-hole match play in groups larger than 2 people.

See also

• Golf glossary

Notes and references