What Is Golf Solitaire?
Golf Solitaire is one of the simplest and fastest solitaire games. You lay out 35 cards in 7 columns of 5 cards each. Your goal is to play as many of those cards as possible onto a single waste pile by building up OR down in rank — regardless of suit. The fewer stock cards you use, the lower your score. Low score wins, just like real golf.
What You Need
- A standard 52-card deck
- 1 player
Setup
- Deal 35 cards face-up into 7 columns of 5 cards each. Only the top card of each column is available to play.
- The remaining 17 cards form your stock pile.
- Flip the top stock card face-up to start the waste pile.
How to Play — Step by Step
- Look at the top (available) cards of the 7 columns.
- If any available card is one rank higher OR lower than the top waste pile card, you can play it onto the waste pile. Suit doesn’t matter!
- For example: if the waste pile shows a 7, you can play any 6 or any 8.
- Keep chaining! If you play an 8 on a 7, now you can play any 7 or 9 next.
- There is NO wraparound — Aces are low (only 2 can go on Ace) and Kings are high (only Queen can go on King).
- When you can’t play any available card, flip the next stock card to the waste pile. This counts as one stroke.
- Keep going until all tableau cards are played (you win!) or the stock runs out.
Scoring
Count how many stock cards you flipped during the game — each flip is one stroke. Add any tableau cards left over when the game ends — those are also penalty strokes. Low score wins.
Winning
Clear all 35 tableau cards before running out of stock cards. In tournaments or multi-round play, lowest cumulative score over 9 or 18 ‘holes’ (rounds) wins.
Strategy Tips
- Look for long chains before playing — identify a sequence that can cascade off one play before committing.
- Avoid leaving only high or only low cards — you want to keep the average near the middle so chains are possible.
- Don’t flip the stock too quickly — exhaust your options each turn before drawing.