Competition in golf: stroke play and match play

Golf is a precision sport that involves the use of a ball and a club.  It is a game where the competitors (called “golfers”) try to win the game by being able to shoot the ball into the hole using fewer strokes than the other golfers.  Unlike most sports, where one team or one player tries to score more than the other in order to win, golf actually needs the player to score less than his opponents in order to win.  There are two general types of competition in golf: stroke play and match play.  Stroke play counts the total number of strokes used by a golfer.  Thus it is won by the player with the lowest total strokes played in the tournament.  Match play counts the number of holes won by a golfer.  A hole is won by the golfer who used the least number of strokes to get the ball into the hole.  Thus Match play is won by the golfer who wins the most holes in a tournament. 

Another unique quality of golf that differentiates it from other sports is that it does not use a standardized playing area.  Most sports have specific sizes for their courts that need to be followed no matter where the game is played.  Golf however is played on different golf courses which all have unique characteristics of their own.  The only constants are the number of holes per course which are either 9 or 18.

The main equipment used by a golfer in a game is the golf club.  These clubs are made up of a shaft fitted with a grip on one end and a club head on the other.  There are several types of clubs: the woods, the irons, the hybrids, and the putters.  The woods are the longest clubs and have the biggest size heads.  They are usually used for tee shots and for other long distance fairway shots.  These clubs are called woods because they used to be made out of Persimmon wood.  Modern technology has now made it possible to make these clubs from steel, titanium, and even carbon fiber but it has formidably retained its wooden name.  The biggest of the wood clubs is referred to as the driver.  It is usually composed of a feather light shaft fitted with a hollowed out titanium club head.  The length of the wood has a direct relation to the distance that it can propel the ball.  For this reason, woods have steadily been increasing in length over the years.

The irons are the most versatile of the golf clubs thus they are the most often used ones.  The face of their club head is at a flat angle and their shafts are shorter than those of the woods.  They are used for a variety of shots including shots that approach the green, shots from the rough, shots that go over trees, and shots made from the base of hills. 

Hybrids are clubs that are somewhere in between the woods and the irons.  These clubs are slowly gaining popularity because of their ease of use.  

The putters are designed specifically to let the golfer roll the ball along the putting green towards the hole.  Thus it has the shortest shaft among all the clubs and is always the last club to be used in each hole.  It has a loft of about 5 degrees but it should not exceed 10 degrees.  Just like the woods, putters used to be made of wood but are now made out of metal.