What does par mean in golf?
Par is the number of strokes a scratch golfer is expected to take on a hole or a full round, set hole by hole mainly by yardage, and used as the baseline every other score is measured against.
Each hole carries its own par, set before you ever play it and based mainly on length: short holes are par 3, mid-length ones par 4, and the longest par 5, with the course's overall par simply the sum of all eighteen. Appendix F of the Rules of Handicapping is where that is set out, and it says par should be established by hole length first, then adjusted for playing difficulty such as elevation changes, forced lay-ups and prevalent wind, and that par "reflects the score a scratch player is expected to score on a given hole". Everything else in the scoring vocabulary hangs off that baseline: a bogey is one over it, a birdie one under, and so on in both directions. Par doesn't move with the weather or the wind on the day; it's fixed to the course. It's also the number every golfer secretly measures their whole round against, whatever the handicap on the card. Put that round on the wall with our golf gift ideas.
Par comes first among the scoring answers in the game, because each of the other three is named by its distance from it: a birdie one under, a bogey one over, and an albatross three under.
Written by Craig Fearn, The Golf Gift Co. Last updated .