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Golf is a game that requires a person to strike a small ball with a club from the teeing ground into a distant hole while following The Rules. It is supposed to be fun. Keeping score is part of the joy. Most people understand the simplest scoring method: one swing at the ball - usually resulting in a more-or-less successful hit - equals one stroke. The lowest score wins, which is fair as long as the competitors are of similar ability. The use of a handicap factor - an allowance of strokes given to a player based on past and current performance - permits golfers of all levels to compete together on an equitable basis.
Even though the handicap system works rather well, some still believe that golf is simply not fair. One advocate for a more satisfying scoring method was Dr. Frank Barney Gordon Stableford (1870-1959), a first-rate golfer and physician who served with distinction and decoration in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Mad Mullah of Somaliland uprising, the Boer War and World War I. He devised an alternative scoring system born "out of frustration of being unable to reach some of the long par fours in regulation figures when harsh westerly winds made a nonsense of the traditional bogey [par] system of scoring."
The objective of the Stableford scoring system is to accumulate the most points over 18 holes of golf. Good scores on individual holes are rewarded with points that reflect the difference between the net score of the golfer against par: 1 point for bogey, 2 for par, and so on.
When and where the system was developed is unclear. One claim is that Stableford devised a prototype system for use in September 1898 while a member at the Glamorganshire Golf Club, in Penarth, Wales. It was reported' that: "Each competitor plays against bogey level. If the hole is lost by one stroke only, the player scores one; if it is halved, the player scores two; if it is won by one stroke, the player scores three; and if by two strokes, the player scores four. To the score thus made, one third of the player's medal handicap is added."
However, the Wallasey Golf Club, in Cheshire, claims that...