How to Play 'the Aim Game'

There are many golf games that include, or are all about, winning points for hitting the fairway. And in the Aim Game, you earn points for hitting the fairway off the tee. But you earn more the closer your drive stops to the center of the fairway, and you lose points the farther off the fairway you are.

The Aim Game is a good game to play to work on driving accuracy (and you can also play it on a driving range). You'll also probably notice, Chi Chi Rodriguez said in his book Chi Chi's Golf Games You Gotta Play (affiliate link), an inverse relationship to your score: The more points you earn in the Aim Game, the lower your score; the fewer points you earn, the higher your score.

Golfers in your group can use any point values you want for the Aim Game. But the standard, recommended in Rodriguez's book, is this:

• Tee ball in middle of fairway: 5 points
• Drive in left half or right half of fairway: 3 points
• Ball in first cut off the fairway: 1 point
• Ball in the rough (outside first cut): -1 point
• Ball in bunker (even if bunker is in fairway) or in the trees: -2
• Ball in water: -3
• Hit drive out of bounds: -5

You can play the Aim Game by yourself, just as a practice game. Or you can play it within your group of golf buddies. The Aim Game, as a betting game, is definitely best played only by groups who are friends and play together regularly. You can imagine the arguments that might happen over whether a drive truly counts as "in the middle" of a fairway or not. So if you play it within your group, make sure you set some grounds rules for awarding that big 5-point reward for "the middle" of the fairway. And always important for any group of golfers playing a points game: Never hold up the group behind you checking out the position of one another's drives.

To play the Aim Game on a driving range as a way to work on your driving accurancy, pick out a green way down the range, or any aiming point. Then use your imagination to picture a fairway, whatever width you want, leading down the range. But be honest with yourself when deciding how many points you've earned or lost with each drive.

More golf games:

• Explaining the 'Fairways Minus Putts' game
• The Fairways & Greens golf game
• How to play the Lone Ranger format