You start aged 20, new to the game, at Kestrel Carr Golf Club. Your name goes on the leaderboards and your birthday decides when you get a year older.
Week 1 of 10
Free evenings this week
Ball for Saturday
This Saturday
Saturday Medal
Lessons with the pro · each takes an evening
Your coach · paid every week, starting the day you hire
Your personal trainer · paid every week
Pro shop
Golf trips · you go this week and miss Saturday
Your game · the red mark is your ceiling
This season’s fixtures
Milestones
Handicap record
1
Par 4 · 352 yards
Club
Shot shape
A draw curves toward your body side and runs further; a fade curves away and stops quicker. Hook and cut bend it hard. You aim at where it finishes.
Ease off for a shorter, slightly straighter shot. Over 100% goes further but sprays more and mishits more often.
Where this shot finishes, out of 100
←→ aim (hold Shift for bigger steps) · ↑↓ club · −+ power · [] shape · Space hit
G go for it · L lag it
Card signed
Gross
Net
Finished
Short of time
Your playing partner takes over: the obvious club, straight at the target, allowing for your natural curve but not for wind or trouble. Quicker than you, and usually a shot or two worse.
This hole
Circle for a birdie, square for a bogey, double square for worse. The way it goes on a real card.
How to play
Practise. Each week you get three free evenings. Spend them on the range, the short game area, the putting green or the gym.
Play Saturday. Tee off in the week’s competition. Pick a club, click the map to aim, then press Hit or the space bar.
Get a handicap. Three cards give you one. Bring it down to climb from club golf to the county, then the tour.
Spend your winnings on lessons, a coach, better clubs and balls.
That is all you need to start. Progress saves in this browser. Short of time? Let your partner play out a hole for you.
Want the detail? Open any topic:
Your golfer and your week
You are 20 and have just taken up golf with a hand-me-down half set. Each week you get three free evenings, then Saturday's competition over 18 holes. Ten fixtures, a fortnight apart, make a season. You get a year older on your birthday.
Every new golfer is rolled differently: starting level, how quickly each part of the game improves (the stars), a natural power ceiling, and a natural shot that is usually a slice and sometimes a hook. You can roll again before you start.
Evenings go on the range, the short game area, the putting green, the gym, a lesson, or overtime for more golf money. Practice works fast at first and slows as you near your ceiling. Lessons raise the ceiling. Skills you neglect go a little rusty.
A golf trip costs you that week's competition and brings you back sharper. They do nothing if you are already at your ceilings.
Progress saves in this browser.
Coaches, trainers and kit
A coach is paid by the week. Better coaches make every practice session count for more, slow the rust and lift your ceilings, and the best only take on better players. Without one, a three-evening week stalls at about a 2 handicap.
A personal trainer does the same for power: a higher ceiling and gym sessions that count for more. Let the trainer go and your power slips back. Every bar tops out at 100.
Once you own the fitted clubs there is always a newer model to buy. Each costs more than the last and helps a little less.
Every ball in the water, out of bounds or lost in the trees comes out of your bag. Good balls go further and stop quicker, and cost more to lose.
On the course
On the course, pick a club, then click or drag on the map to aim. The ring is where two shots in three finish. The bar says how often you find fairway, green, sand, trees or a penalty.
On the course the ring shows your curve: a slice finishes right of where you aim, a hook left. Aim to allow for it, or have the grip lesson and put up with four rough weeks.
Every club except the pitch has a power slider, from 50% to 110% of a full swing. Easing off goes shorter and a touch straighter, with fewer mishits. Going over 100% goes further but sprays more and mishits more often.
Every shot leaves a tracer, in 3D and on the map. Pick a shape before you hit: a draw curves toward your body side and runs out, a fade curves away and stops quicker, and a hook or cut bends it hard. Shaping it the same way as your natural shot is easy; going against it costs some control. Choose right- or left-handed under Edit details.
Each full shot plays out in a 3D view: your golfer swings, and the camera follows the ball down the hole. Switch it off with the 3D button on the map, or press Skip or the space bar to cut it short.
Short of time? Give Saturday a miss from the clubhouse, or on the course let your partner play out the hole or the rest of the round for you.
Competitions and prizes
Competitions differ. The weekly medal costs £3 to enter. The Monthly Medal, Captain’s Day and President’s Prize cost more, draw bigger fields and pay more. Every one pays vouchers down to 5th, plus nearest the pin on all four par 3s and longest drive on the longest par 5. The season ends with the Club Championship, played off scratch.
Nearest the pin is your tee shot and has to finish on the green. Longest drive is your tee shot and has to finish on the fairway.
Handicaps
Three cards get you a handicap. After that it follows the real method: the best 8 of your last 20 rounds, fewer while you have fewer on record, with each hole capped at a net double bogey. Scores are measured against each course’s rating and slope (Kestrel Carr: 67.6 and 114), and you play off 95% of your course handicap.
The career ladder and the courses
The ladder: a handicap of 10.0 at the end of a season gets you county events. A handicap of 3.0, or winning the County Championship, gets you regional and national amateur events. At 5.0 or better you can turn professional, though most wait until scratch: Regional Pro Tour, then the Challenger Tour, then the World Tour with its four majors and, every other season, the Continental Cup. Promotion and relegation between tours go on Order of Merit points, and a top-ten finish at Tour School in week 10 is the fast route up. All of these are invented names.
Kestrel Carr is your home club, an invented 18-hole parkland course: par 70, 5,881 yards, with water, woods, a railway and an orchard to keep you honest. Club competitions are played there.
Bigger events travel. County and national championships, tour events, majors and the Continental Cup are played at six other invented courses: Saltmarsh Links, Harrowdene Heath, Fellside, Blackwater Abbey, Pinecrest National and Cypress Bay. Each has its own character, rating and slope, and the links and cliff-top courses are windier. The fixtures list shows where each event is played.
Player names
The game comes with invented players. You can load your own list of names from a file, and they will fill the fields, the side-prize winners and your Continental Cup opponents.
File format
A CSV file (save it from Excel as CSV) or JSON, with a header row. Only name is needed.
level: where they play. world, challenger, regional, amateur or club. Blank means world.
rating: 1 to 100. Higher-rated players finish higher. Ratings only rank players against others at the same level, so they do not make the game harder.
team: Europe or United States, for the Continental Cup.
name,level,rating,team
Alex Marlowe,world,92,Europe
Jordan Castell,world,88,United States
Sam Whitcombe,challenger,75,Europe
Chris Dunmore,amateur,60,
The file is read on your device and kept only in this browser. The names are never sent anywhere and are not part of the game.
What’s new · version 1.0.3
1.0.3 – 28 October 2026
New Exit game button at the top of every screen (title screen, clubhouse and on the course), which takes you back to the Rainbow Gaming homepage. It sits in its own strip above the title, so it never covers a control, and it is smaller on phones.
Leaving in the middle of a round asks you to confirm first, in a box on the page. Your round is saved, and you carry on from where you left off next time.
How to play is now a four-step quick start. The full rules are still there, folded into short topics you can open when you want them.
The shot shape buttons no longer squash the word Straight on narrow phone screens.
1.0.2 – 27 October 2026
Added this changelog: open What’s new in the game, or use the What’s new link at the bottom of the page. The website also has a changelog page.
1.0.1 – 26 October 2026
New fiction notice on the start screen and in the Copyright, privacy and credits section (and the privacy page): "Golfers, clubs, courses and competitions are fictional. Countries appear by name only. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any governing body or tour."
The version number now shows at the bottom of the game.
Kestrel Carr redesigned from scratch. The first layout was adapted from a real course; the new one is generated for the game and checked hole by hole against that course, with no hole matching. Still par 70 parkland (5,881 yards) with water, woods, a railway down the 10th and an orchard behind the 18th, and the same rating (67.6) so handicaps carry over. New hole names and stroke indexes.
A round in progress at Kestrel Carr when you update is scrapped, because the holes have changed. Saved careers, handicaps and money carry over.
Everything else is unchanged: the Continental Cup, golf trips to real countries, the career ladder and the six venue courses.
1.0.0 – 26 October 2026
First web release.
A golf career from age 20 with no handicap: practice evenings, lessons, coaches, personal trainers, gear, balls and golf trips.
Handicaps worked out the way amateur golf does it, with course rating and slope.
Club competitions with side prizes, county and national amateur events, three professional tours, four majors and the Continental Cup.
Kestrel Carr home course and six venue courses: Saltmarsh Links, Harrowdene Heath, Fellside, Blackwater Abbey, Pinecrest National and Cypress Bay.
3D shot view with ball tracers, shot shapes (hook, draw, straight, fade, cut) and left- or right-handed golfers.
Optional player names file, read and kept in your browser only.
Fonts and 3D engine served from the site itself, with no third-party requests.
Golfers, clubs, courses and competitions are fictional. Countries appear by name only. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any governing body or tour.
If you load your own player names file, those names come from you, are shown only to you, and are not part of the game. The handicap maths follows the general method used in amateur golf, but the numbers it produces are for this game only.
Privacy
There are no accounts, adverts, analytics or tracking cookies.
The name, home town, county and birthday you type in are only used inside the game. They and your progress are saved in this browser on this device, and are never sent to Rainbow Gaming or anyone else.
Clearing your browser data, or pressing Start a new career, deletes them.
A player names file you load is read on your device and kept in this browser only. Go back to invented names, or clear your browser data, to remove it.
Everything the game needs, including its fonts and 3D engine, comes from this website. Nothing is loaded from other companies. Like any website, the hosting service may keep standard technical logs, such as IP addresses, for security and to keep the site running.
Credits
3D graphics use three.js (MIT licence). Fonts: Barlow, Barlow Condensed and Caveat (SIL Open Font Licence).