Golf Solitaire: History, Records and Competitions

Golf, the game of clearing seven columns onto a single pile, already appears in a 1926 book with today's layout and nine-hole scoring. Nobody knows who invented it, and the books have never agreed on what to do with Aces and Kings. Here is what the record actually shows.

September 23, 2026 · 7-minute read

The name and where it comes from

The game goes by two names: Golf, and One Foundation, because every card ends up on a single pile. David Parlett describes his own game Black Hole as "derived from a traditional one variously called 'Golf' and 'One Foundation'".

Solitaire historian Michael Keller calls Golf "one of the oldest forms of solitaire", originally called One Foundation "in, for example, Tarbart's 1905 Games of Patience" (the book's first edition dates from 1901). That "for example" matters: Keller is not saying 1905 is the first appearance. We have not been able to check Tarbart's entry ourselves.

Why "Golf"?

The name comes from the scoring. Each deal is a hole, and the cards left in the columns are your strokes for that hole. A round is usually nine holes and the lowest total wins; clear the table with cards still in the stock and you subtract them. The 1926 book puts it simply: "As in golf, the smaller the score, the better it is." Who first used the name, and when, is unknown.

Golf in books and magazines

1926. The earliest book in which we could confirm the name is Pastimes for Sick Children and Rainy Day Occupations for Those Who Are Well, compiled by Mary Street Whitten and Hope Whitten and published by D. Appleton and Company. Its layout, five overlapping rows of seven face-up cards, is the one we still use. But nothing shows it was the first; it is simply the earliest we could verify.

1928. According to Keller's bibliography, Arthur Lewis Pope and Harry Johnson's 30 Games of Solitaire gives Golf with Ace and King wrapping under the name "Monabelle Clifford" and claims a win rate of 1 in 10. Keller adds that he could find no historical person of that name.

1937. An uncredited article, "Golf Solitaire", ran in the October issue of Games Digest, a magazine edited by bridge expert Ely Culbertson with Albert Morehead and Geoffrey Mott-Smith as associate editors. Keller calls its rule (nothing on Kings) the inferior version but likes its scoring: clear the tableau and you score minus one for every card left in the stock. The 1926 book already scored that way.

1949. The two associate editors' Complete Book of Solitaire and Patience Games (New York: Longmans, Green) lets you build up or down regardless of suit, changing direction on any play. Only a two goes on an Ace, and "a king stops the sequence — a queen may not be built on it." The entry is headed "Chance of winning: 1 in 20 games", the source of the often-quoted 5% win rate. It is the authors' practical estimate, not a calculation. The British edition followed in 1950 as The Complete Book of Patience.

Aces and Kings: a rule that was never settled

What makes Golf easy or hard is how Aces and Kings are treated, and sources have disagreed from the start.

• According to Keller, the original One Foundation did not wrap, but a Queen could still go on a King (J-Q-K-Q-K was legal). Someone, "possibly Bonaventure in his 1931 Games of Solitaire", later added the "malevolent rule" that nothing may go on a King.
• Yet the 1926 Whitten book already says that a King breaks the series and a Queen cannot be placed on it. In exchange, it lets either a 2 or a King go on an Ace.
• Software is split three ways today. PySolFC's "Golf" does not wrap but allows a Queen on a King; "Dead King Golf" allows nothing on a King; "Relaxed Golf", also called Putt Putt, wraps Ace and King.

So "standard Golf" depends on which book you open. Golf on this site does not wrap but lets a Queen go on a King: the rule PySolFC and Politaire simply call "Golf", and the original rule as Keller describes it.

Computers and the internet

Ken Sykes wrote "Golf 1.1" in 1989 and joined Microsoft the same year. His Golf shipped in the first Microsoft Entertainment Pack in October 1990 and again in The Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack in 1994; support for the packs ended on January 31, 2003. Golf is also in Super Solitaire for the Super Nintendo, released in North America in January 1994.

Search an app store for "golf solitaire" and many of the apps turn out to be TriPeaks with a golf theme. MobilityWare's Golf Solitaire Pro Tour calls itself "tripeaks solitaire with a golf twist", and Golf Solitaire Tournament is described as a TriPeaks game too.

How hard is it? What the solvers say

In 2013 Jan Wolter ran the first 100,000 Politaire deals through a solver that sees every card. With nothing allowed on Kings, 26.1% were winnable; with a Queen allowed on a King, 45.1%; with Ace and King wrapping, 93.0%. Charlie Blake and Ian P. Gent tested 10 million deals under the Queen-on-King rule and found 45.109% winnable, in a paper published in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research in 2026. In 2015 Chuzo Iwamoto proved that generalized Golf is NP-complete.

Our own check of 5,000 deals left 2,778 (55.6%) unsolved. The 44.4% our solver did solve is almost exactly the 45% others found for the same rule. All of these figures assume the solver knows the stock order, so for a person playing blind they are a ceiling.

The Golf family

TriPeaks combines Golf's play with a Pyramid-like layout. Parlett's Black Hole removes the stock entirely: the Ace of Spades is the only foundation, the other 51 cards are spread in fans of three, Ace and King connect, and solvers find about 87% of deals winnable.

Stories and misconceptions

• "Microsoft invented Golf." The game is in a 1926 book. Sykes wrote the Windows version.
• "The nothing-on-Kings rule dates from 1931." The 1926 book already has it, and even Keller named the 1931 book only as a "possibly".
• "Old-rules Golf is 45% winnable, 95% with wrapping." Both are solver figures for play with every card known, and the exact ones are 45.1% with a Queen allowed on a King and 93.0% with wrapping. With nothing on Kings it drops to 26.1%. Players who can't see the stock do worse: for the nothing-on-Kings rule, Morehead and Mott-Smith estimated 1 game in 20.
• "Golf is another name for Forty Thieves." Forty Thieves is a separate two-deck game.
• The multi-player card game Golf also scores low over nine "holes", but it has nothing to do with this solitaire.

Competitions, records and communities

Offline: no tournaments, but ways to compete

We found no Golf solitaire tournaments, championships, clubs or Golf-specific Guinness records. It is a one-player game, so competing means playing under the same conditions, and books have supplied the formats. Morehead and Mott-Smith's Tournament Golf (1949) has two players each play nine games: the lower score wins one point for each hole, and the lower nine-hole total (the "medal" score) wins three. Playing alone, you beat par if your medal score is under 36. George F. Hervey's 1966 children's book Your Book of Patience puts Golf in its "Competitive Patience Games" section; Sid Sackson published "Mini Golf", a variant that can also be played competitively, in a 1987 magazine; and Peter Arnold's 2010 book, as cited by Wikipedia, suggests 18-hole totals or golf-style match play. These are ways to compete at home, not events anyone has held.

Par varies: Morehead and Mott-Smith and Keller use 4 per hole (36 for nine), Wolter and Wikipedia use 5 (45), and Wikipedia counts zero or less as perfect.

Online: one speedrun leaderboard

The only formal record-keeping we found is speedrun.com's Golf leaderboard for Super Solitaire. As of September 2026 the fastest verified run is 38 seconds by TigDwan (September 5, 2021, with nothing allowed on Kings). Leaderboards change, so check there for the latest. In-app "tournaments" and "seasons" are game features, not real events. For how solitaire competitions usually work, see Solitaire Competitions and Communities.

Competing on this site

The weak spot of Tournament Golf is that each player gets a different deal. Here, one number is one deal, stock order included. Each deal's rankings list fastest time and fewest moves separately, and because every win takes all 35 cards, fewest moves means fewest draws. To play a round, pick nine deal numbers with a friend and each play them. Tactics are in the Golf strategy guide.

Sources

1. Pastimes for Sick Children and Rainy Day Occupations — Whitten, 1926
2. The Complete Book of Solitaire and Patience Games — Morehead, Mott-Smith, 1949
3. Golf Solitaire — Michael Keller
4. Solitaire Bibliography — Michael Keller
5. Black Hole — David Parlett
6. Golf (patience) — Wikipedia
7. Golf rules — PySolFC
8. Experimental Analysis of Golf Solitaire — Jan Wolter, 2013
9. The Winnability of Klondike Solitaire and Many Other Patience Games — Blake, Gent
10. Computational Complexity of Generalized Golf Solitaire — Iwamoto, 2015
11. Bogus Software — minesweepergame.com
12. Microsoft Entertainment Pack — Wikipedia
13. Super Solitaire — Wikipedia
14. Super Solitaire — speedrun.com
15. Golf Solitaire — MobilityWare
16. Golf Solitaire Tournament — App Store
17. Golf Solitaire Rules — Solitaire Central
18. Golf (card game) — pagat.com

Keep reading: How to Play Golf Solitaire · Golf Solitaire Strategy Guide · A History of Solitaire · Solitaire Competitions and Communities