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Family Golf Game Night

3 October 2026 · 5 min read

A family golf game night is an evening of golf-themed games at home that everyone can play, from young children to grandparents. You don't need a course, clubs or good weather: a phone or laptop, a few household objects and a scorecard are enough.

The trick is choosing games where luck and patience count as much as skill, so the youngest player has a real chance of beating the best one.

Plan the evening

A good game night has a shape. Something like this works for most families:

1. Warm-up (10 minutes): a quick putting challenge on the carpet.
2. Main event (30 minutes): a 9-hole round of a golf game, taking turns.
3. Break: snacks and a golf quiz.
4. Final (10 minutes): a closest-to-the-pin shoot-out to decide the champion.
5. Prize-giving: a trophy, even if it's a mug with a ribbon on it.

Keep the whole thing to about an hour for younger children. You can always play another round.

Game 1: the living-room putting course

Lay out a short course with whatever you have: a mug on its side as the hole, books as walls, a cushion as a hill. A real putter is ideal, but a broom handle and a tennis ball work fine.

• Three to five holes is plenty.
• Each player counts their strokes on each hole.
• Set a maximum of six strokes per hole so nobody gets stuck.
• Let each child design one hole. They'll try much harder on it.

Move anything breakable first, and keep balls soft if little ones are playing.

Game 2: a pass-the-phone golf round

A browser golf game turns a phone or laptop into the main event. Everyone plays the same 9 holes in turn and writes their score on a shared card.

Pass-the-phone works well because nobody waits long: each hole takes a minute or two. Younger players can be helped with the timing, and older ones can try a harder course.

Make the scorecard part of the fun. Draw it on a big sheet of paper and colour each score: green for par, yellow for a birdie, red for anything over. If anyone is unsure of the words, golf scoring explained covers par, birdie and bogey.

Making it fair for all ages

Mixed ages need a little levelling. A few simple handicaps:

Another option is Stableford-style points instead of strokes: 2 points for a par, 3 for a birdie, 1 for a bogey and 0 for anything worse. One bad hole then doesn't knock a child out of the contest.

Game 3: golf quiz during the break

Ask a mix of easy and harder questions, and let teams of an adult and a child answer together. Good easy ones: how many holes are on a full golf course (18), what's one under par called (a birdie), what do golfers shout to warn others (fore). There are plenty more in golf trivia questions.

Game 4: the closest-to-the-pin final

End with one shot each. On the carpet, everyone gets a single putt at a coin on the floor, and the closest wins. In a golf game, play one tee shot each on a par 3 and measure who finishes nearest the hole. It's quick, tense and a perfect decider.

House rules worth agreeing first

• Mulligans: each player gets one free retry per round. See what is a mulligan in golf.
• Gimmes: putts within a hand's length count as holed.
• Cheering: allowed for every good shot, including the other team's.
• Sulking: costs a stroke.

Try it in Mashy

Mashy is free and runs in the browser on a phone or laptop with no download. Start a round as a guest, pass the device round, and play the same nine holes. Its closest to the pin mode, one tee shot on each par 3 with the feet added up, makes a ready-made final.