No experience 1

In previous days I was talking to a friend; he told me he had no clue about golf, well actually he knew that the ball was supposed to drop on the cup, but that was pretty much it. He said he was interested in knowing more about the sport; and I'm sure he's not the only one out there who happens to be inexpert on this matter. Therefore, I'll make a series of posts regarding golf basics for those who want to know what people means when talking about Lorena Ochoa, Tiger Woods and other high class players.

For starters, every hole must be completed in a certain number of strokes, this is called PAR. So, when you hear someone saying: the 8th hole is par 5, that means you are supposed to finish it with no more than five strokes.

Nevertheless, this might not happen regularly and some other terms jump in. If that same hole, number 8, par 5, is finalized with 6 strokes, 1 over par, that means we've just scored a BOGEY; if we do the opposite and we finish it with 4 strokes, 1 under par, then we'll just made a BIRDIE.

But what if we complete it with 7 strokes, 2 over par?,  well then we've just made a DOUBLE BOGEY; but if we manage to finish it with 3 strokes, 2 under par, then we made an EAGLE.

Now, if we go to a club and they tell us: "this course is PAR 72", that means that the addition of every hole (that's all the pars) is equal to 72, here's an example:

In the previous image OUT means the front or first nine holes (1-9), while IN refers to the back or last nine holes (10-18).

It's not a rule, but almost every 18 hole course happens to be par 72, still, there are some clubs that feature par 71 or par 73 courses.

Now we know a bit more about strokes and terms; tomorrow we'll talk about the parts that set a course, so stay tuned!