Golf darts rules: eighteen holes on the numbers 1 to 18
Golf darts is the one game here where low is good. Hole one is the number 1, hole eighteen is the 18, and the best dart of your three sets the hole: a treble is an eagle, a double a birdie, a single a par, and three darts that found nothing is a bogey.
How a hole is scored
On hole N everybody throws up to three darts at the number N, and only the best of them counts. Strokes, exactly as a card would read them:
Treble = 1 stroke (eagle) · double = 2 (birdie) · single = 3 (par) · nothing = 5 (bogey).
Because only the best dart counts, a hole is over the moment you find the treble — and the two darts after a treble 7 are worth precisely nothing, which is a decision the game makes you take eighteen times.
Add the eighteen holes up, and the lowest total wins. A par round is 54. Level at the close goes to sudden-death extra holes, one full round at a time, until somebody leads on strokes. The nineteenth hole is the 1: a board has no nineteenth number, so sudden death plays the card again from the top.
Match play and skins
Stroke play — fewest strokes over the round — is the classic game and takes any number of players. Two players can instead play the format real golfers play over eighteen: match play, where each hole is won, lost or halved and the totals never matter at all.
A hole scored 1 against 5 counts exactly as much as one scored 2 against 3, and the match ends the moment somebody is more holes up than there are holes left — the round closes out “3 & 2” the way a card would say it, with the remaining holes never thrown.
Any field of two or more can play for skins instead, the way a club night plays for money: every hole is one skin to the lowest score, and a hole nobody wins outright carries its skin onto the next. Three tied holes and the fourth is worth four skins in one throw. Most skins over the round wins.
Who throws first
Golf has one rule about the order, and it is the one thing a scoreboard usually gets wrong: the honour. Whoever wins a hole leads the next one, and a halved hole leaves the order as it was. It matters most in the two formats where a hole is a duel — throw last and you know exactly what you have to beat, which is not the game golf is.
Both orders are house rules on the board, and each one is the whole of what it does: Seat order — every hole is thrown in the roster’s seat order, so the last player to throw always knows the score to beat. The honour — whoever wins a hole leads the next one, the way golf gives the honour — a halved hole leaves the order alone, so nobody throws last by right.
Your own card is the same either way, so both orders share one high-score board.
House rules this board plays
The part no other rules page has, because no other site implements them. Each one opens the setup screen with that rule already set.
- Match play, hole by hole Two players, every hole won, lost or halved, strokes never carried over, and the round closing out as soon as the lead is bigger than the holes left. A blown hole costs one hole rather than a round. Set it up →
- Skins, with the ties carrying A skin a hole to the lowest score, and a tied hole rolling its skin onto the next one — so a late hole can be worth five and nobody is out of it at the turn. Set it up →
- A blank hole capped at 4 The club rule. A hole with nothing in it costs one over par instead of two, so a single wiped hole cannot decide a round — the version to play with a beginner, or on the 3. Set it up →
- Double bogey for a blank hole The other direction: nothing on the number costs 6, so a wiped hole is that much harder to come back from and the treble is worth chasing to the last dart. Set it up →
- Strokes given, the way golf gives them A per-player handicap: a shot off as many holes as the handicap says, so a parent can play a child on level terms and both of them are still playing the same round. Set it up →
- The honour, the way golf gives it Whoever wins a hole leads the next one and a halved hole changes nothing, so the player who threw last on the sixth is not the player who throws last on the seventh. Worth most in match play and skins, where the hole in front of you is the whole game. Set it up →
- The front nine Holes 1 to 9 — half the round, all of it in the awkward corner of the board, and done inside half an hour. Set it up →
Common questions
- How is golf darts scored? Only the best of your three darts counts on a hole: a treble is one stroke, a double is two, a single is three, and three darts that found nothing is a bogey of five.
- How many holes is a round of golf darts? Eighteen, thrown at the numbers 1 to 18, and the lowest total wins. A par round is 54, and level at the close goes to sudden-death extra holes, thrown at the 1 again.
- Can two players play match play instead? Yes. Each hole is won, lost or halved, the totals never matter, and the round closes out as soon as somebody is more holes up than there are holes left.
Play it
Golf darts is one of the twenty modes in Friendly Fire Casper, a free darts scoreboard that runs in a browser and keeps working when the wifi drops. It scores the game for you, undoes the dart you typed wrong, remembers who won, and can put the board on a TV while everybody scores from their own phone.