medal play

6.2

A way to score golf where the player with the fewest total shots wins

noun

Jargon

: juego por medallas

She prefers medal play because it rewards consistency over the entire round.

Examples

The tournament was played in medal play format.
In medal play, every stroke counts toward your final score.
The championship was decided using medal play instead of match play.
Have you ever participated in medal play events?
In medal play, every stroke counts, making it crucial for golfers to focus on accuracy throughout the game.
She preferred medal play because it emphasized consistency rather than one-on-one competition.
During the tournament, the winner was declared after all players completed their rounds in medal play.

Synonyms

stroke play

vsmedal play

Specialized

1 5.9

A way to score golf where the lowest total shots wins

has identical meaning but is the alternate traditional name

Surface Forms

medal play singular

medal plays plural

Morphology

medal + play

The golf term 'medal play' refers specifically to stroke play (a scoring system by total strokes), which is a specialized, jargonistic meaning not signaled by the literal words. Knowing 'medal' (a prize) and 'play' (an action or turn) would not allow a B1 learner to infer a scoring-method sense, so the meaning is not compositionally derivable. This is a domain-specific idiomatic usage, making it opaque to learners without prior exposure.

Etymology

Medal play may come from old golf contests where the winner got a small medal for taking the fewest strokes, so the name came to mean the scoring method where every stroke counts, called 'stroke play'.