The Format
How to play Six/Six Golf
One bag, one dozen fewer clubs than you're used to, and only six balls for the whole round. Six/Six trades the safety net of a full bag for something more interesting: knowing your own distances cold, and being able to manufacture a shot when the yardage falls between clubs.
How This Started
My clubs got stolen. That's the real story.
This season, I moved back from Colorado into a new apartment here in Illinois — and somewhere in that move, my clubs were stolen. All of them. What I had left to play with was whatever I could scrape together: an old Ping 2-iron, a mismatched mock Ping set — 4, 6, 8, and a pitching wedge — and my son's putter.
I hadn't played a round in three years. So I took that odd little half-set out with my kids, and we all played from the shortest tees — together, same course, same speed.
I had a blast. More fun than I'd had playing golf in years.
I'd also been lifting weights, without ever really connecting it to my golf game. On the first hole at Mill Creek — 272 yards to the green — I drove that old 2-iron wide right, pin high. From there I floated a pitching wedge thirty feet in the air and watched it come down eight feet from the cup. Two putts with my son's kiddie putter, and I had my par.
Four holes later, from the Granite tees on the fifth — 276 yards to the green — I put my tee shot in the sand left of the green, pin high, and got up and down anyway. Another par.
Twenty minutes in, playing five clubs and my son's putter — already the most fun I've had in my life.
That was the lightbulb moment. My actual game — the score I used to chase — still stunk. But I realized something that changed how I thought about golf entirely: I liked my shots more than I liked my game. The parts that stuck with me were never the score. They were the shots I had to invent, because I didn't have the "right" club sitting in the bag for the job.
That's where Six/Six Golf came from. Six clubs, six balls, no reloading — not a gimmick, but the exact version of the game that gave me my golf back.
The three rules
Pick six clubs for the bag — but pick them so there's real distance between each one, not six clubs bunched close together. Any combination of woods, hybrids, irons and wedges works, as long as the gaps between them are real. The last slot is set by default as your putter, but even that's flexible: you can put in an extra wedge here, but you have to putt with it. Know what each club actually does at a Half, Three-Quarter and Full swing — that's what turns six clubs into eighteen usable distances, spread out enough that a shot can fall between them.
Start the round with six balls. That's your whole supply — there's no pocket full of spares backing you up.
No reloading. Lose a ball and it's gone for the round — you play on with fewer. Lose all six and the round's over wherever you stand. It makes every shot into a hazard worth respecting, not just the ones near water.
The Core Mechanic
Where the shots run out
Six clubs times three swings gives you eighteen distances — but real yardages don't land neatly on those eighteen numbers. The gaps between them are the whole point: when your shot falls in one, there's no club to reach for. You have to manufacture the shot instead — take some speed off a longer club, lean on a shorter one a little harder, flight it down, hold it up. The Build tab's Gap chart shows you exactly where your own gaps are, so you know before you're standing over the ball.
Made a shot into one of your gaps? Log it in Gap Shot Log — yardage, club, swing and what happened. Over a season it becomes your own reference of what you can actually pull off under pressure, not just what a book says a club should do.
Smart Assists
Four built-in recommendations
The app doesn't just show you your gaps — in four places, it actively tells you what to do about them.
Right under the Gap chart. Looks at your current six clubs and suggests the single best one-club swap to close your worst gap — using your own logged Gap Shots when you have them, PGA Tour averages when you don't. One tap to apply it.
Right under your club table. Found real extra speed on one club — a new max, a lesson, a faster swing? Update that club's Full yardage and this offers to scale every other club in your bag by the same ratio, one tap, instead of you re-typing five more numbers by hand.
Right below Distance to Pin once a round is underway. Enter — or let it auto-fill from the course data or a GPS distance — the yardage you're facing, and it tells you which club and swing to hit, or flags it as a real gap you'll need to manufacture a shot for.
Search for and load a real course, pick your tees, and — before you tap "Start a round" — this shows you the single best Set of Six for that specific course's yardages, ranked against your current bag, every preset, and your own Saved Sets.
Keeping Score
Six/Six Index
Play scores the normal way — strokes to par, hole by hole. The Six/Six Index is just a personal number layered on top: your average to-par across your best rounds played this way. It's deliberately informal — a way to watch your own progress, not an official handicap.
For Coaches & Instructors
Four pathways
Six/Six scales from a first junior clinic to a certified instructor's lesson plan — same three rules the whole way, different bar for what a coach should expect.
Six clubs, shortest tees, no scorekeeping pressure yet. Look for real contact and a basic sense of distance — can the player tell you, without checking a chart, roughly how far their own 7-iron goes? That's the whole bar at this level. Skip the driver until contact is consistent; a shorter, tighter-gapped bag builds confidence faster than raw distance does.
This is where a real driver-distance club enters the bag and gaps start to matter competitively. Look for a player who can explain a shot choice, not just execute one — "I took speed off my 7-iron because the pin's tucked" is the level you're building toward. The Gap chart and Six/Six Index are built for tracking a full season here.
Tournament-ready gap management. Expect a player to have a real shot history — logged Gap Shots for their three widest gaps, with notes on what actually worked under pressure, not just on the range. This is the level where liking your shots more than your score starts paying off in the scorecard too.
Not a personal bag — a teaching toolkit. A Certified Six/Six Instructor should be able to introduce the format to a brand-new student in a single lesson: pick six, find the gaps, manufacture the shot. The condition-based Sets of Six on the Build tab are built to be loaded live in a lesson, to show a student why a bag changes with the course, not just the player.
Rule Three — Move Forward
How to hit the shots between your clubs
The Gap chart on the Build tab shows you exactly where your eighteen distances leave a hole. When a real shot falls in one of those gaps, there's no club to reach for — you manufacture the shot instead. These are the four ways to do it.
Gap Shot 1 of 4 · Shortens a longer club
Take speed off
Use it when: your longer club's full swing flies past the gap, but the next club down doesn't reach it.
Gap Shot 2 of 4 · Extends a shorter club
Lean on it
Use it when: your shorter club's full swing comes up short of the gap, but the next club up is more than you need.
Gap Shot 3 of 4 · Lowers the flight
Flight it down
Use it when: wind, a low ceiling, or a firm green means you need to take the top off the shot rather than change the distance much.
Gap Shot 4 of 4 · Raises the flight
Hold it up
Use it when: you need the ball to stop quickly — short-sided, over a hazard, or into a firm, fast green.
Beyond the Gap
Situational shots
The four Gap Shots above are about distances that fall between clubs. These four are about everything else that changes a shot — a green with no lob wedge to throw at it, a ball buried in sand, wind, and an awkward lie. Still the same idea: work with the six clubs you have.
Situational Shot 1 of 4 · Greenside
Bump-and-run
Use it when: you're just off the green with no dedicated lob wedge in your six.
Situational Shot 2 of 4 · Greenside
Bunker escape with your six
Use it when: you're in a greenside bunker and your six doesn't include a dedicated sand wedge.
Situational Shot 3 of 4 · Conditions
Playing the wind
Use it when: wind is strong enough to change your club selection, not just your aim.
Situational Shot 4 of 4 · Lie
Uphill & downhill lies
Use it when: the ball isn't sitting on flat ground and the slope is working with or against your swing.
Quick reference
The four Gap Shots, side by side
| Shot | Distance effect | Trajectory effect |
|---|---|---|
| Take speed off | Shorter | About the same |
| Lean on it | Longer | About the same |
| Flight it down | About the same | Lower, more roll |
| Hold it up | Slightly shorter | Higher, less roll |
The four Situational Shots, side by side
| Shot | Used when | Key adjustment |
|---|---|---|
| Bump-and-run | No lob wedge | Less loft, putting stroke |
| Bunker escape | No sand wedge | Most loft, hit the sand |
| Playing the wind | Strong wind | Club up or down |
| Uphill/downhill lie | Sloped ground | Club up or down |
Pulled one of these off on the course? Log it in Gap Shot Log with the yardage, club and swing you used — over time it becomes your own reference for what actually works, not just what these diagrams suggest.
Rule One — Build Your Six
Your bag
Six clubs, meaningful gaps between them. Enter what each club actually does at Half, Three-Quarter and Full — the gaps below are computed from your own numbers.
Changing a club fills in typical PGA Tour average distances for it automatically — edit any number to match your own game. Any of the six slots can be your putter, or a full-swing club if you'd rather putt with something else; whichever slot is set to Putter just drops out of the full-swing gap chart below. Just found extra speed on one club? Update its Full yardage and the app will offer to scale the rest of your bag by the same ratio.
Your Library
My Saved Sets
Found a combination that works? Save your own six — your real numbers, not the typical ones — and load it back any time.
The Gap
Where the shots run out
Every dot is a swing you can hit on purpose. The shaded bands are yardages none of them reach — that's where you're making the shot, not picking the club.
Rule Two & Three — Load Six, Move Forward
This round
Six balls. No reloading. Start when you make the turn to the forward tees.
Before you start
Best Set of Six for this course
Scored against this course's actual hole yardages — using your longest club's Full swing as the tee shot, so the approach distance left for each hole comes straight from the format itself, not a generic driver average.
Round complete. Here's the card — save it or share it.
The Gap Shot
Log a manufactured shot
The target distance fell between clubs, and you made one anyway. Keep the record — it becomes your personal Shot Matrix.
Your Shot Matrix
Six/Six Index
Your number
A simplified, self-referential measure from your own Six/Six rounds — not an official handicap, just yours.
Round history
Tap a row to see the hole-by-hole scorecard.
| Date | Course | Tee | Score | To par | Balls left |
|---|