As some of you already know, the Stableford method is one of the 10 modalities there are for playing golf. This method is undoubtedly the one most commonly used in the world of amateur golf, as it has the great advantage of being able to remove the ball and not finish the hole when the established maximum number of strokes permitted for scoring has been exceeded.
In what does the Stableford method consist of?
In this game mode, each hole scores in relation to the par: 1 point per bogey, two per par, three per birdie and four per eagle. When it is not possible to finish the hole within the maximum number of strokes permitted to score, the ball is removed. The winner is the person with the most points.
What are the rules of the game?
The system works in the following way:
1.If we play to par playing with our handicap, we are awarded 2 points.
2.If we play one more stroke over our handicap, we are awarded 1 point.
3.If we play two or more strokes over our handicap, we are awarded 0 points.
4.If we hole the ball with a stroke less than our handicap, we are awarded 3 points.
Germán Castillo, profesor de Golf Ibiza
The resulting par in 18 holes, which does not alter our handicap, is 36 points, two for each hole. As you can see, the more points you score, the better your ranking in this game mode.
The advantages of this method
This method has advantages for amateur players or high handicaps. The main advantage is through allowing the player to remove the ball, which makes game play faster as it is not necessary to finish each hole. This way the player can rest for a part of the course and then start again on the next hole.
In addition, with the Stableford method, we can recover points lost in previous holes, although even in one hole we scored 0 points.
Finally it has to be mentioned that with this game mode the definition of gross and net are used alot: gross is the total amount of strokes we make in each hole and net is when we subtract our handicap. For example, a 36 handicap would have two strokes of advantage in each hole for playing 18 holes. This means that if in a par five the player uses seven strokes he is left with five net strokes; it would be said the player had made net par and would be awarded 2 points under the Stableford rules.
In national championships this modality is not used because the essence of golf is to make the least number of strokes possible taking into account the 18 holes.
Remember the handicap is the level of each player with respect to the par of the course. What’s yours?
Until next time at Golf Ibiza!
