Wolf: pick a partner, or go it alone.
One player a hole picks a partner off the tee, or takes on everyone alone. Part golf, part poker, and the reason most foursomes stop arguing about what to play.
One player a hole picks a partner off the tee, or takes on everyone alone. Part golf, part poker, and the reason most foursomes stop arguing about what to play.
Every hole, one player is the Wolf. The role rotates, so it comes around to everybody.
The Wolf tees off, then watches the others hit one at a time. After each tee shot they make one decision: do I want this player as my partner for this hole? Say yes and it's a 2v2 for the hole. Say no and that player is gone — you can't come back to them once the next person has hit.
Which is where the game lives. Somebody stripes the first drive, you pass because you fancy your chances with better, and then you watch two more balls disappear into the trees. Now you're on your own whether you wanted to be or not.
Pass on all three deliberately and that's a Lone Wolf — one against the rest of the group, for more money.
It's the closest golf gets to poker. You're reading tee shots, reading the people hitting them, and deciding how much of the hole you want to take on yourself.
Before anybody plays a shot, you settle the order — and the way we play, you settle it with a tee flip.
Everyone stands in a circle on the first tee. Flip a tee, and whoever it points at when it lands is A. Flip again with A out of it, and whoever it points at is B. Keep going until everyone has a slot, and you've got your order for the day.
That order doesn't get re-drawn. It holds for the whole round — but it cycles, moving up by one every hole.
Filled = the Wolf that hole. Example shows a foursome.
Flip up golfers A, B, C, D and A is the Wolf on the 1st, B on the 2nd, C on the 3rd, D on the 4th — then it's back to A on the 5th. The order itself never gets re-drawn. The Wolf just steps one place along it every hole, which rolls the tee order from A, B, C, D to B, C, D, A and on round.
That example is a foursome. The cycle is always as long as your group — a threesome comes back around every third hole, a fivesome every fifth. Same tee flip, same step to the right, just a shorter or longer loop.
The important part: it cycles no matter what happens. Win the hole as a Lone Wolf, lose it four ways, halve it — doesn't matter. The order advances by one and the next player up is the Wolf. Nobody has to remember whose turn it is, because it's the same rotation all the way round.
Some groups break the cycle for the last holes — handing the Wolf to whoever's losing so they've got a way back in. That's a house call, and it works the same way here: you're entering the points either way, so the app doesn't need to know which version you picked.
Wolf pays in points. You agree what a point is worth before the round, and the points settle at the end.
That's the common version. It is emphatically not the only one, and your group has probably already changed something about it.
Wolf has more house rules than any other game on the sheet. Groups add birdie bonuses. They double the back nine. They argue about what a Blind Wolf is worth, and whether the Lone Wolf loses points when he's beaten rather than just failing to win them.
The cycle doesn't divide evenly either. Three players go round eighteen holes cleanly — six turns each. Four players get four turns each over sixteen holes, leaving two spare, and five players leave three spare. What happens on those last holes is another thing your group decides.
None of that is a problem to solve. It's the game. The only thing that has to be true is that all of you agree before the first tee shot.
This is the part that matters, and it's the opposite of what you'd expect from an app.
GolfApp never asks who the Wolf is. It doesn't ask who got picked, who went alone, whether that one was blind, what a Lone Wolf pays in your group, or what you do about the 17th and 18th.
You play the hole, agree the points, and type them in.
Which sounds like the app is doing less — and it is, deliberately. A Wolf game that made you configure a ruleset would only ever support the rulesets somebody thought to build. This supports every version of Wolf there has ever been, including the one your group invented and the amendment you're going to make on the 5th tee.
It's also why the group can be three, four, or five players. There's no rotation engine to break.
There's almost nothing to it, which is the point.
The handicap setting controls which holes show a stroke dot for this game, so when you're working out who won the hole you can see who was getting one. If you're running Wolf alongside a Nassau, a player can be stroking on different holes in each — the dots you see on the Wolf card are the ones that count for Wolf.
No rotation to enter. No rules to pick.
With a Wolf game running, the score entry screen splits in two. Raw golf scores go up top, the same as any round. Wolf points go underneath, in their own section, entered by side.
Settle the hole with your group on the way to the next tee, then enter what each side won. The golf scores still do everything they normally do — they feed every other game in the round, and they post to GHIN at the end.
You can enter the points gross or netted out. Six and zero, or three and nothing — it makes no difference. Wolf is zero-sum, so only the gap between the sides changes what's owed, and GolfApp settles either version identically.
Watch the hole dots along the top of the card. A filled circle means the hole is complete. A half-circle means only one side went in — the golf scores or the game points, but not both. That's how you catch the hole where everyone forgot to settle the Wolf before driving off.
Wolf can't span foursomes. The whole game is watching each other's tee shots and choosing on the spot, so it only works with the people you're standing with. Skins, Nassau, and Stroke Play are the ones that run across groups — Wolf stays home.
Both are point-entry games, and two of those in one round would be ambiguous — the app couldn't tell which points belonged to which game. Pick one.
Everything that scores itself off raw numbers stacks on top of Wolf just fine. Run a Nassau against your buddy, put a skins game across the whole outing, add a Stableford — all of them score off the golf scores you're already entering, while the Wolf points run alongside.
Wolf is a foursome game that happens to be the best foursome game. Everything else you'd want to play on top of it still works.
Wolf is a betting game for a small group where one player each hole — the Wolf — watches the others tee off and decides whether to take one of them as a partner for that hole, or to play alone against all of them. The role rotates every hole, so everyone gets to be the Wolf.
Wolf is usually played with four, but it works with three or five. Three is the cleanest rotation — eighteen holes divides evenly into six turns each. With four, everyone is the Wolf four times over the first sixteen holes, and most groups have a house rule for the last two.
By points, with a dollar value agreed before the round. The standard is one point each to the winning side when the Wolf has a partner, and three points to a Lone Wolf who beats all three on their own. Nearly every group adjusts this somewhere, which is fine — the points are whatever you agree they are.
A Lone Wolf is the Wolf choosing to play the hole alone rather than taking a partner, one against the rest of the group. It pays more because it is harder — three points is the common figure. If the Wolf passes on every tee shot, they end up going alone whether they meant to or not.
Declaring you are going alone before anyone has teed off, including yourself. You are committing without seeing a single shot, so it pays more than an ordinary Lone Wolf. How much more is a house decision.
No, and that is the whole tension of the game. The Wolf has to decide immediately after each tee shot, before the next player hits. Pass on a drive down the middle hoping for something better and you cannot go back to it.
No. GolfApp does not ask who the Wolf is, who got picked, who went alone, or what a Lone Wolf is worth in your group. You play the hole, agree the points, and type them in. That is what lets it handle any house ruleset and any group size from three to five without configuration.
No. Both are point-entry games, so two of them running at once would be ambiguous — the app would not know which set of points belongs to which game. Pick one. Any of the automatically scored games can stack on top of it.
No. Wolf depends on watching each other's tee shots and deciding partners on the spot, so everyone playing has to be in the same group. That is a limit of the game itself rather than the app.
GolfApp keeps the running Wolf tally and settles the payout from your per-point stake, free for life, with no subscription or premium tier. Because you enter the points rather than configuring rules, it works with whatever version of Wolf your group plays.
ScotchThe other points game — six a hole between two teams, with twists and re-twists.
NassauFront, back, and overall, with presses. Stacks on top of a Wolf game happily.
Where Wolf fits among the other games a foursome can run.
Every format GolfApp scores, handicaps, live standings, and the settle-up.
Free for life. No subscription, no premium tier.
Download for Free