07 Mar The merits of match play over stroke play

Basically, there are two ways to play the game of golf — one is to keep hitting the ball until the round is finished and then add up the total, and the other is who’s hit the least wins.

The second format is called ‘match play’ and actually decided many of the early big tournaments. Match play is where we fight for every hole one-on-one and who has won the most holes at the end of the round wins the match. Match play is the more exciting form of play, as a lesser known player can triumph over a top player.

However, this is the worst nightmare for any organisers as their star players could easily make early exits from the tournament. For this reason the vast majority of tournaments are decided over four rounds of stroke play.

ls the traditional tournament format set in stone? Or could it perhaps be changed? Recently, a new tournament format was tried on the European Tour and this new initiative was a combination of stroke play and match play. The bottom line was that it created more excitement and better TV ratings.

Out of Bounds: Aussie jokes are still being sent in by golfers with a sense of humour, and here is another.

An Englishman, who wants to marry an Irish girl, is told he needs to become lrish before he can do so. It is a very simple operation where they remove 5 percent of your brain. Anyway, the Englishman wakes up after the operation and the doctor comes up to him looking all worried and says: “I’m terribly sorry, there’s been a mistake to be sure, we accidentally removed 50 percent of your brain instead of 5 percent!”

The Englishman sits up and says simply: “She’ll be right, mate.”