Explaining the 'One-Club Challenge' Golf Format
All you need to know about how the golf game known as One-Club Challenge works is right there in the name. In this format, golfers get to use just a single golf club throughout the round. And that club is used on all strokes, including putts.
One-Club Challenge can be a fun tournament format for golf associations looking for something outside the usual routine, or a game (perhaps with money on the line) that a group of golf buddies decides to play. It can even be a practice game for a solo golfer.
Other names for it include One-Club Tournament and just "One Club" (or "1 Club"). "Single Club" and "Solo Club" are uncommon alternate names for this format.
In a game of One Club, it is usually up to the golfers involved to choose for themselves which club to use. And which club that is for you depends in part on your strengths and weaknesses. If there is a single club you are absolutely in love with, in which you have total confidence, then maybe that's the right club to choose.
Just remember that you'll be using that one club for every stroke — from the teeing ground, on approaches, from rough, out of bunkers, for chips and pitches, even for putts. (Some golfers or tournament organizers might play One Club with the putter allowed, so it's the putter plus one club. Most of the time, though, a One-Club Challenge means literally just a single club.)
In author Ron Kaspriske's Complete Book of Golf Betting Games (affiliate link), the writer, a longtime Golf Digest contributor, suggests most golfers should "go with a 7-iron or 6-iron. These clubs have enough loft to hit shots around the green and just enough distance to make some par-4s reachable in two, and most par-5s reachable in three."
In Chi Chi's Golf Games You Gotta Play (affiliate link), Chi Chi Rodriguez wrote that he used a 4-iron for One Club: It was a club he had complete confidence in and knew he could use in many different ways on the course. "I can use my 4-iron to lift your wallet out of your back pocket," he said.
Another, broad-based suggestion is that golfers playing a One-Club Challenge should use his or her 150-yard club, whatever that might be. Scottie Scheffler, in the video at the top of the page, uses a 4-iron; Seve Ballesteros, Lee Trevino, Nick Faldo and Isao Aoki, in the video at the bottom, all chose 5-iron. As already noted, the right club for someone else isn't necessarily the right club for you in a One-Club Challenge.
One thing a One-Club Tournament will force every golfer to do: Be creative. You'll probably find yourself making shot choices you've rarely made before, perhaps attempting things you've never tried before. And you still have to putt with 6-iron, or whatever club you chose. And that's what can make One Club a great practice game.
Outside of a tournament setting, whether playing One Club Challenge within your foursome or as a solo golfer practicing new types of shots, make sure to be aware of the golfers around you on the course. For most golfers, One Club requires more strokes (often many more) than standard golf, and can lead to golfers attempting to play big, sweeping slices and hooks that might get away.
There are many similar golf games that put a limit on the number of clubs a golfer can use during a round. Those include Random Club Challenge, Two Clubs and a Putter, Three Club Monte, Five of Clubs and 14 Clubs.
See also: Why do the rules limit golfers to 14 clubs?
