Midnight is a golf game where you do not have to count everything. Your best eleven holes make your card, plus the eighteenth, which always counts. Twelve holes, and the other six are somebody else's problem.
It is the game for the player who is three holes from a good round and one blow up away from a bad one, which is most of us.
This is a simulation, not a live round. Tap the green Start Simulation button to learn the game and watch this made up match unfold one hole at a time. Just like in our app, you'll see a summary of the drama below the holes and a leaderboard.
The scores above are invented, but the scoring is not: this is the same card and the same live leaderboard your group sees on Big Fairways while you play.
Play MIDNIGHT Now! Decide on the results screen whether each hole countsMidnight is a scoring format rather than a betting game, though almost everybody plays it for something. You play all eighteen holes as normal, but only twelve of them go on your card: the eleven you choose, and the eighteenth whether you like it or not.
The lowest gross card wins the gross pot and the lowest net card wins the net pot, so a group of mixed handicaps can play it together without anybody feeling like a passenger.
Before the round, agree the pots and whether you are playing gross, net or both.
The forced eighteenth is the whole design. Without it, a player could arrive at the last with his card already full and nothing to play for. With it, everybody has something riding on the final green.
Every version of this game that lets you drop your worst holes has the same problem: the end of the round goes dead. Making the eighteenth compulsory fixes it in one line of rules.
It also produces the moment the game is named for. A player who leads on his best eleven can lose the whole thing to a double bogey on the last, which is exactly what happens in the demo round above.
Say a player goes round in 88 with two disasters, an eight on the fourth and a nine on the eleventh.
The 88 never gets mentioned again. That is the appeal.
Before teeing off, agree on:
The one that changes the game most is whether you declare as you go. Choosing at the end makes it arithmetic. Choosing as you play makes it a decision, and decisions are more fun to argue about.
If you are playing Midnight for the first time, use this simple version:
Midnight is the kindest game on this list. It forgives the two holes that ruin most rounds and it still finishes on a real shot on a real green with something on it.
If your group has one player who is always out of it by the seventh, this is the format that brings him back.
Keep score automatically and settle up in the app Eleven holes plus the last one, worked out as you playYou play all eighteen holes but only twelve go on your card: your best eleven plus the eighteenth, which counts no matter what you make on it. The lowest twelve hole card wins, gross or net depending on the pot.
Because otherwise the end of the round goes dead. A player whose best eleven are already banked would have nothing to play for coming in. Forcing the last hole onto every card means the round finishes on a real putt, and a double bogey there can cost somebody the pot.
Both are played. Picking as you go is the better game, because you have to decide whether a bogey is good enough to keep before you know what is coming. Big Fairways asks you on the results screen after each hole.
Yes, and most groups do. Strokes are allocated by stroke index in the normal way and the counting holes are chosen on net score, which is why a high handicapper can win it outright.
Two or more, and it scales as far as you like because every player is really playing against the card rather than against a specific opponent. It works well as a trip long or season long game for that reason.