How to Play the Legends Golf Game

You might have heard of golf games with names like Trash, Junk, Dots or Garbage. Those are catch-all games — games that combine many different side games, sometimes dozens of them, to be played simultaneously. Legends is a similar catch-all format, but one that is smaller in size: Legends combines side games that are named after golf greats.

Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan and many more greats from the history of our game have side games/wagers named after them. Those games are the basis of Legends. And in Legends, those games simply run concurrently. If you are playing Legends, that means that your group is playing some combination of Hogans, Nicklauses, Arnies, Seves or any of the other side bets named after golf greats.

Groups that play Legends usually have their own favorites, and their own favorite number of such games, to include in Legends. Some of the possibilities include:

• Arnies: You earn an Arnie by making par on a hole without ever being in the fairway.
• Nicklauses: Hit the longest drive in your group to earn a Nicklaus point.
• Hogans: Awards a point on each hole to any golfer who hits the fairway with her drive, to any golfer who records a green-in-regulation, and to the golfer who is closest to the point after a GIR.
• Murphies: You can earn a Murphy point by getting up-and-down when chipping from off the green. (Named after Bob Murphy, sometimes called Raymundos or Floyds after Raymond Floyd.)

There are other such games, like Garys (or Players), for getting up-and-down out of a greenside bunker; or Seves or Geibergers. Of course, you group can make up your own. And some of the ones we've mentioned have alternate names (Nicklauses can be Tigers, Arnies can be Seves or Mickelsons) or alternate definitions (Hogans can instead award a single point for a golfer who makes par after hitting the fairway and green).

The gist of Legends is this: Your group picks multiple of these types of games, and all the games you pick are running during your round of golf. At the end, add up all the points that everyone has earned from the various games, and pay out the differences.

More golf games:

• The Lagging game explained
• How to play a Reverse Scramble
• How to play Split Sixes