Casual Games guide

A round with friends, scored and settled.

Casual Games is the free side of Fairway Flow that players run themselves: pick a course, pick a game, and the app keeps the card and works out who owes whom. Here's how it works and what's in it.

What Casual Games is

Casual Games is a round of golf among friends that isn't a tournament and isn't a league night. Any player with an account can start one. They pick the course, add the people they're playing with, choose what they're playing — skins, a Nassau, Wolf, a scramble — and the app keeps the scorecard and the tab.

It is free, for every account. There is nothing for an organizer to set up, switch on or pay for.
It is separate from tournaments and leagues. A casual round never touches an event's scores, standings or handicaps, and none of these game modes run inside a tournament or a league.
Players reach it from the Casual | League switch at the top of their home page. Someone in no league opens straight onto it.
As an organizer you don't run it and can't see into anyone's rounds. This guide and the list of game modes are here so you know what your players have.

How a round goes

Whoever starts the round is its organizer. Setting one up is four short steps, and each remembers what that player did last time.

1Where — a course from the library with its tees, playing all 18 or either nine — or a scorecard typed in for a course the library doesn't have. Courses they've played before are one tap.
2Who — up to eight players. Friends join with a six-letter code or a QR code; people without the app are added by name as guests; anyone they've played with before is one tap.
3What — one to six game modes on the same round, from 39 on offer. The most-played ones that fit the group come first, with pairs that go together, like a Nassau and skins.
4Tee off — one screen showing the course, every player's strokes, and each game mode with its sides, settings and stake. Then scores go in hole by hole.

Everyone in the round can enter scores. The organizer makes any picks a game mode needs on a hole — the Wolf's partner, who three-putted, a press — and is the one who finishes the round.
While it's played, the round has three views: the scorecard, where each game stands, and the money.
Play it again sets up a new round from a finished one: same course, players, game modes and stakes.

The 39 game modes

Each game mode has its rules written out in the app, a worked example, and its own settings. Several can be played on one round. They fall into four groups.

Ways of scoring (9): Stroke Play, Match Play, Stableford, Modified Stableford, Quota, Par / Bogey, Flags, Peoria, Callaway.
Team formats (11): Scramble, Shamble, Best Ball, Best Per Par, Cha Cha Cha, Lone Ranger, Aggregate, Alternate Shot, Greensomes, Chapman, Gruesomes.
Betting games (16): Skins, Nassau, Wolf, Vegas, Daytona, Nines, Sixes, Low Ball / High Ball, Bingo Bango Bongo, Banker, Hammer, Rabbit, Snake, Acey Deucey, Defender, Dots.
Contests and extras (3): Closest to the Pin & Long Drive, Mulligans, String.

Playing for money

Any game mode can be played for a stake or just for points. The app does the arithmetic; it never handles money.

Each game mode has its own stake — a dollar a skin, five dollars a Nassau bet, a dollar a point. Leaving it empty plays for points only.
After every hole the round shows who's up and who's down, and every line can be traced to the hole and game mode that made it.
When the round is finished, the app works out the fewest payments that square everyone. Players pay each other however they like and tick each one off as paid.
No cards, no transfers, no balance held in the app. It is a scorekeeper that does the sums.

Handicaps

Each player keeps a handicap index on their profile. For a round it becomes strokes for those tees, and the round's organizer can change anyone's strokes before or during play.

With a rated course, strokes are a course handicap from the tees' rating and slope. With a typed-in scorecard, the index is used as it stands.
Guests are given their strokes when they're added.
These handicaps are the player's own. A league's handicaps are worked out by the league and are not shared with Casual Games, or the other way round.

Friends and the feed

The Casual home page is a feed of rounds: the player's own, and their friends'.

Players become friends by asking and being accepted. They find each other by name, from people they've already played with, or by email. A request arrives as a notification.
A friend sees every casual round the other plays, in full — the scorecard, how each game finished, and the money — and can change none of it.
A round's organizer can also make a spectator link for people without an account. It shows the scorecard and the games, and never the money.

Every casual game mode →

All 39, with the rules and a worked example for each.

Running a tournament →

One-day and multi-round tournaments.

Ready to start?

See the game modes Create an account