Play the course again and again, and keep only your best score on each hole. Your 18 best holes make one card, and the best card wins. A birdie on the 7th in November still counts in March.
Over a set run of rounds, keep your lowest score on each hole. Every new round can only improve the card: a lower score replaces the one there, a higher one changes nothing. At the end, the 18 best holes are totalled, a handicap allowance comes off, and the lowest card wins.
An eclectic (from the Greek for picking out) builds one card from many. It’s also called a ringer, and a season-long one is a ringer board; the USGA uses both names. It can run over two rounds on a trip, a month, or a whole season.
In the UK and Ireland the eclectic is a fixture of the winter: clubs run a winter eclectic from October to March, when there’s little else on the competition calendar. Club rules usually say how many cards count (one club allows one pre-nominated card a month, another up to six a month) and require you to declare on the first tee, before hitting, that the round is for the eclectic.
Worked example. Nine holes, two rounds.
Two ordinary rounds of 39, and an eclectic four shots better than either. Over a whole winter the card gets a lot lower than that.
There’s no single standard. A best-of-every-hole card is far lower than any one round, so playing off a full handicap would hand the event to whoever played the most rounds. Clubs use a fraction of the course handicap: half is the most common, and some use a third or two-thirds.
For a season-long ringer of more than 72 holes, the USGA says no single allowance percentage makes the competition equitable, and suggests flighting players by Handicap Index instead.
Same course, same tees. Most eclectics are played on one course from one set of tees, so every hole is compared like with like.
Stableford eclectic. Keep your best points on each hole instead of your lowest score. Highest total wins.
36-hole eclectic. Two rounds on the same course, often on a golf trip: the lower score on each hole counts.
Gross ringer board. A season-long board of every member’s best score on each hole, with no handicap. The longer it runs, the closer it gets to a birdie on every hole.
Card limits. Limiting how many cards count, or making players declare a round in advance, stops the player who plays every day from running away with it.
Eclectic isn’t one of the formats Duck Hook Golf scores yet. The free app scores 32 others — skins, Nassau, Wolf, Vegas, Stableford, Snake and the rest — and does the arithmetic and the settle-up for you.
Get the free app Browse all 52 gamesAn eclectic is a competition over several rounds in which each player keeps their lowest score on each hole. The 18 best holes make one card, a handicap allowance comes off, and the lowest card wins.
None: they’re two names for the same thing. A season-long eclectic is often called a ringer board.
There’s no single standard. Clubs use a fraction of the course handicap, most often half, because a best-of-every-hole card is much lower than one round. For season-long ringers of more than 72 holes, the USGA suggests flighting by Handicap Index instead of an allowance.
As many as the competition sets: two rounds on a golf trip, a month, or a whole winter. UK and Irish clubs commonly run a winter eclectic from October to March, often with a limit on how many cards each player can submit.
Not yet. Duck Hook Golf scores a round at a time, and an eclectic isn’t one of its formats.
Same energy, different game. Everything below has a full rules guide of its own.
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