QOLF Game - The off course golf game

QOLF is a unique lawn game that is a cross between golf and croquet with a twist. The object of the game is to hit your QOLF ball either through an elevated bonus hole, or you can choose to putt your ball through a croquet style frame. Bonus points are awarded for hitting your ball through the elevated hole.

We found the official QOLF rules to be a bit long and hard to follow, so after a few minutes of skimming through the instructions we ended up creating our own simplified rules for the game.

Here were the rules that we used. For official rules please visit QOLF.com

A coin toss determined the player that would design the first hole. Designing the course is honestly half of the fun of the game. We got creative and used the swimming pool, palm trees and sandbox as natural hazards of the course. Designing each hole only took about 2-3 minutes.

Our QOLF game consisted of a circular piece of yellow rope that we used to mark the green or fairway with. 3 QOLF Frames that had different bonus values depending on the size of the bonus holes on each and several QOLFballs.

The QOLF Frame is a croquet style frame with a bonus hole that is elevated.

A QOLFball is a specially designed limited flight safety ball that travels less than half the distance of a regular golf ball. We could launch ours about 45 feet with our wedges if we really tried. Surprisingly these balls were accurate after we got used to the distance. We also found that they are a lot safer than real gold balls. I hit a wild shot that found our family room window. No harm was done since the QOLFballs are not real golf balls and would have a hard time breaking glass.

Okay, back to the game...

After the hole was designed we each hit our GOLFballs with 2 ways of scoring:

• The easier way to score is to putt your QOLFball through the croquet style frames. Your score would simply be the number of strokes it took to get your ball though the frame. (just like real golf)
  
  
• The harder way is to chip your QOLFball through the elevated bonus hole on the QOLF Frame. This would basically deduct the bonus points from the number of strokes. For example, if it took you 5 strokes to get the ball through the bonus hole that was worth 3 bonus points, you would score only 2 strokes on that hole. (strokes - bonus = score)

The player with the lowest score on the hole gets to design the next hole and the player with the LOWEST score after you have completed a set number of holes wins the game.

We found the game to be fun to start and even more fun after a few holes. QOLF got more fun with the addition of more backyard obstacles. On hole 6 that I designed we used the rope to mark off the fairway that we had to hit prior to heading towards the QOLF Frame. We started on the tee box, went over the pool to the fairway, then we had to shoot left over the children's sandbox to the QOLF Frame.

Also, since you use your own real golf clubs, this game can actually improve your golf game since it fine tunes your short game and gets you more familiar with your own golf clubs.

For more information about the game of QOLF, visit QOLF.com