Golf scoring and course-management guides
These guides are for golfers who care more about shooting a better total than making every hole look good against scratch par.
OKBogey is built around a simple idea: decide the score you want to shoot, turn that total into a realistic hole-by-hole plan, and manage the round against that plan. The articles below explain the scoring maths and the decisions that help protect the total.
What is Target Par?
How a target total becomes an individual target for every hole, and why a double bogey can sometimes be exactly on plan.
How to break 90 in golf
Turn 89 into a realistic scoring plan, use driver where it improves the route, and reduce the doubles and penalties that push a round into the 90s.
How to break 100 in golf
A complete 99-shot plan, worked example and practical approach to avoiding the big numbers that wreck break-100 rounds.
How many pars do you need to break 100?
The maths behind a 99, why zero pars are mathematically required, and why controlling blow-up holes matters more than chasing pars.
How to break 110 in golf
Build a 109 target and understand why you do not need a card full of pars to get below 110.
Course management for high-handicap golfers
Choose tee clubs, safe misses and recovery shots around the total you need rather than automatically copying a scratch-golf route.
Why bogey golf works
Why accepting bogey as a useful score can improve club selection, recovery decisions and the total on your scorecard.
How to avoid blow-up holes
How penalties, recovery decisions and trying to win shots back immediately turn manageable holes into 8s, 9s and 10s.
How to recover after a bad hole
Protect the overall target after a triple bogey, penalty or lost ball instead of asking the next hole to repair the damage.
Stroke Index vs hole difficulty
What Stroke Index actually tells you, why SI 1 is not necessarily your hardest hole, and how your scoring history can tell a different story.
What is Personal Stroke Index?
How your own repeated scoring can identify the holes that cost you most and make a future Target Par allocation more personal.
The OKBogey approach
A golfer trying to shoot 99 on a par-72 course has 27 shots above course par available. Those shots are not 27 failures; they are the scoring budget for the round. A sensible plan assigns them to holes before you play, then lets you judge each result against the total you are actually trying to achieve.
If Target Par gives you enough room to take three or four controlled shots to get to the green or greenside, driver is not compulsory. If driver gives you the best route, use it. The point is that the hole's target, not the word “par” on the card, should determine how aggressive the route needs to be.
The same applies after a bad hole. An 8 on a Target Par 7 is still an 8 on the scorecard, but it has cost only one shot against the plan. Treat it as +1 to the target, keep the next hole's job unchanged and avoid turning one dropped shot into several.