Bingo Bango Bongo: Three Points a Hole

Updated 13 September 2026 · 3 min read

Bingo Bango Bongo is the great leveller. It has almost nothing to do with your score and everything to do with three small races: who gets on the green first, who finishes closest once everyone is on, and who holes out first. A 24-handicapper can win it off a scratch player on a good day, which is precisely why groups keep coming back to it.

The three points

Three points on every hole, fifty-four across a round, and none of them care what you wrote on the card. Add them up after the 18th and the most points wins.

One player can take more than one point on the same hole. First on the green, closest once everyone is on, and first in the hole is all three — a hole in one takes the lot.

Play strictly in turn — this is not optional

The whole format rests on one discipline: the player farthest from the hole plays first, every time. Ready golf does not work here. If the player who is 40 metres out putts before the player who is 90 metres out has played their approach, they have taken a shot at Bingo that was never theirs to take.

Same on the green. Bango is decided once every ball is on the putting surface, so a player who holes out early has removed themselves from a measurement that had not happened yet.

It is worth saying plainly: this makes the round slower. Bingo Bango Bongo is a format for a quiet Tuesday or an empty back nine, not for a packed Saturday morning with a fourball waiting on every tee.

Everybody holes out

There are no gimmes. A conceded putt is a Bongo handed over, and the player who gave it may well have given away the point that decided the round. If your group habitually waves away anything inside two feet, agree before the first tee that in this format nothing is conceded.

A worked hole

A par 4. Four players, playing in turn throughout.

• Tim is 30 metres short in two and pitches on first. Bingo — Tim.
• Everyone else reaches the green. Once all four balls are on, Chrissa is nearest the hole. Bango — Chrissa.
• Chrissa is closest, so she putts last. Rogers, farthest away, holes his first putt. Bongo — Rogers.

Three points, three different players, and Tim — who took the Bingo — made a 6. The card is irrelevant.

Why the handicap gap closes

Bingo rewards getting on in regulation, which favours the better player. Bango rewards a good approach or a decent lag, which is anybody's. Bongo rewards holing out, and the short putter in your group is often not the low marker.

More to the point, the high-handicapper who is 60 metres out in three plays before everybody else — and gets the first crack at Bingo every time they are behind. Being worse at golf is, briefly, an advantage.

Agree these before you start

• What a point is worth. A dollar a point is common; 54 points a round makes that a real but survivable number.
• Whether a green in regulation is required for Bingo. Some groups say the first ball on the green counts however many shots it took. That is the version SkinsMate follows.
• Order of play discipline. Say out loud that ready golf is off for the round, or someone will forget on the second hole.

How SkinsMate handles it

SkinsMate keeps the three points per hole against the right player, so nobody is trying to remember on the 11th who took Bango on the 4th. The running total is there on the phone, and the settlement at the end is worked out from the points rather than from four people's recollections in the carpark.

Settle it before the first beer.