A twos competition is run as part of another competition. In a twos competition, anyone who makes a gross two on a hole wins a share of the prize.
Each two is worth a share in itself, so if a player were to make a couple of twos during a round, this would earn him or her two shares of the prize pot. Traditionally, the prize set aside was a number of golf balls. However twos competitions have migrated often into awarding a cash prize rather than actual golf balls, the prize often not given as cash but as a voucher to be used at the club’s pro shop, or a credit to a member’s account there.
This was because twos competitions tended to be run by the club professional as an income earner. He would take a percentage of the entrance fee for this competition and the rest he would distribute as prizes. Some clubs have their twos competition as an optional extra to the main competition; at others it is a fixed part of the day’s competitive activities, with part of the entrance fee allocated to the main competition and part to the twos element.
Making it optional does allow those higher handicappers a chance to opt out of what is, in effect, a scratch competition if all competitors are entered in the same single competition. The chances of a high-handicapper making a two on a hole, which would be a birdie on a par 3 or – at least in theory anyway – an eagle on a par 4, are not great.
As such, twos competitions, being based on gross scores, greatly favour the lower handicappers. Some twos competitions are separated into divisions based on handicaps to avoid this.
Another way in which one twos competition can differ from another is in their attitude to a hole in one. Does this count as a 2? Some say it does, some say no; others count it as the equivalent of two twos. Some indeed even award half of the total pot to a hole in one.
