What is golf all about?
The whole idea of the game is to put a little golf ball into a hole with the least possible number of strikes with specially designed clubs. The distance between the tee (the starting point) and the whole place on the green is about 500 meters (from 80 to 450 on average).
What is a golf link?
It is a specially designed large area divided into so-called "holes". A typical game of golf is 18 holes. There are also 9-hole courses, which are used for practicing.
The courses are not just flat fields; they have various obstacles like lakes, trees, bushes, bunkers, and sometimes a river or even an ocean (which of course, does not mean that you have to shot the ball over it). The golf grass has to meet a high standard. It is cared for everyday, trimmed, fertilized and watered. On the green, the grass looks like a soft carpet - it is short and thick.
What types of game are there?
There are many different forms of competition in golf, several dozens altogether. I will describe only three most popular ones. Match play - a player or players (or teams) compete to win individual holes, with the side winning the most holes claiming the match. If players have the same number of shots, it's a tie. Stroke play - the player who plays the stipulated round or rounds in the fewest strokes is the winner. In other words all the strokes are counted during the round. For a single hole depending on its distance, the par is usually from 3 to 5 strokes but there are holes with par 6 or more. A professional player should finish the game with about the 71 strokes. Amateurs will need a bit more (usually from 80 to 110). Beginners drag usually at 150. The winner is the player who finishes the round with the lowest number of strokes.
Stableford is a scoring system used in golf. The Stableford competition is probably the most common event played at club level. It involves scoring points based on results at each hole. The points are calculated according to player's handicap. The winner is the player with the highest number of points.
