Pub Golf, Explained: The Bar-Crawl Format BRCH Turned Into a Tournament

Pub golf is a bar crawl scored like golf. The course is a route of bars, every bar is a hole, and every hole has a par: the number of sips or drinks it should take to finish your drink there. Finish under par and you are ahead. Take extra sips and the strokes pile up. Lowest score at the final hole wins. It turns a wandering crawl into a game with standings, strategy and a champion.

How pub golf works

• A course of bars, usually nine or eighteen holes, mapped in walking order
• A par for every hole, set by the drink: a shot might be par one, a pint par three
• A scorecard for every player or team, tracked hole by hole
• House rules for hazards: spilling, skipping a hole, or breaking dress code costs strokes
• Golf attire, or some costume dress code, because the photos demand it

The format works because it gives a group night out a spine. Nobody asks where to go next, the course decides. Nobody drifts off, the scorecard keeps the group together. And the competitive frame means the last hole matters as much as the first, which is more than most bar crawls can say by midnight.

The BRCH edition

BRCH ran Pub Golf on April 19, 2024, as a competitive day-drinking experience with a BRCH twist: teams competed across venues, dressed to impress, and played for glory. It sits in the BRCH games lineage that started with the Beer Pong Tournament on June 22, 2021, the very first BRCH event, where a competitive tournament brought people together and planted the seeds for everything that followed.

Games formats like these are the daytime counterpart to the BRCH dress-code nights. The White Party and Black Party ask a crowd to become the visual. Pub Golf and the Beer Pong Tournament ask a crowd to play. Both ask the same thing underneath: do not just attend, take part.

Run your own pub golf

• Keep the course walkable. Nine holes is a night, eighteen is a marathon
• Set pars honestly. A course nobody can score on is no fun by hole four
• Print the scorecards. Paper beats phones for comedy and for evidence
• Crown the winner properly. Glory is the whole point

Every BRCH format, games included, is documented on the events timeline. If playing sounds better than spectating, join the waitlist for the next one.

Games that work in a loud room are rounded up in Party Games for Adults.