Wolf
Start here — set the order of play
Wolf is a four-player points game built around one dramatic decision per hole: who hunts with whom. But before anybody hits a shot, the group has one piece of housekeeping to do — decide the order of play. Toss a tee, flip for it, or just agree on it. That order is the backbone of the entire round, so settle it on the first tee.
Whoever lands first in the order is the Wolf on hole 1. Hole 2 belongs to the second player, hole 3 to the third, hole 4 to the fourth — and on hole 5 it starts back at the top. The Wolf always tees off first on their own hole, and everyone else follows in that same rotating order, which is what makes the Wolf’s decision possible: they get to watch every drive before committing.
Across 16 holes that hands everyone the Wolf role exactly four times — dead even, nobody gets a better draw than anybody else. Holes 17 and 18 are the leftovers, and that is why most groups give the Wolf on those two to whoever sits last in points. It is a built-in comeback mechanic, and it keeps the round alive to the last putt.
In Battle Tees, the order you list the players in at setup is the rotation — put them in tee order once and the app takes it from there, showing whose hole it is, every hole, on every phone.
Picking a partner — one shot at each
The Wolf watches the second player hit. Like the drive? Claim them as a partner. Pass, and the third player hits — but the second player is now off the table, no going back. Same choice on the third: take them, or pass and the fourth player hits — and the Wolf is stuck with whatever that drive looks like.
Best ball of each side decides the hole. Ties push — with an optional carryover that doubles the next decided hole.
Going alone
Lone Wolf: after hitting a drive they love, the Wolf can declare against all three. Bigger points if they win, and every field player collects if the field takes the hole.
Blind Lone Wolf: declared before hitting a single shot — the biggest gamble in the game, at the biggest payout.
⚡How to actually win it
Count the rotation backwards. You are Wolf on a known set of holes. Look at which ones they are before the round — being Wolf on a reachable par 5 is worth far more than being Wolf on the number-one handicap hole. Save your aggression for the holes where a good drive means something.
The second player is the real decision. Passing on a good drive to gamble on the third and fourth is where most points get thrown away. Rule of thumb: if the second player is in the short grass and they're the best ball-striker of the three, take them. You cannot go back.
Lone Wolf is a math problem, not a mood. Going alone pays roughly double but you're one ball against three. It's correct when you've hit the fairway on a hole where the other three are in trouble, when you're trailing late and need variance, or when the carryover has stacked the hole. It is not correct because you're annoyed.
Blind Lone Wolf is for the desperate and the drunk — declared before anyone hits, at the biggest payout on the board. Late in a round you're losing, it's the only shot that erases a deficit in one hole. That's exactly why it exists.
Play the handicap, not the ego. Strokes come off the low man, so the 20 getting a shot on a hard par 4 is often the best partner on the board. The scratch player who ignores the dots loses to arithmetic.
🔥Why it's the best hour in golf
Wolf front-loads the drama. Every single hole opens with a public decision that everyone watches you make — and then has to live with. There is no coasting, no waiting for the match to develop, no hole where nothing is at stake.
It also creates the two best sounds in a money game: the groan when the Wolf passes on somebody's drive, and the noise when a Lone Wolf pulls it off. Passing on your buddy's fairway finder and then watching the fourth player block one into the trees is the single funniest recurring event in golf.
Because the role rotates, everybody gets the hot seat an equal number of times. Nobody can complain about luck for long — you'll be Wolf on your own bad hole soon enough.
💰The wager
Wolf is scored in points, and your group decides what a point is worth before the first tee. That single number sets the temperature of the whole round.
A typical 18 swings somewhere around 12–25 points between the winner and the loser, so a dollar a point usually means a $15–25 round — real enough to sting, small enough that nobody drives home angry. Turn on carryovers and that range widens fast: a pushed hole doubles the next decided one, and two pushes in a row make a single hole worth four times the going rate.
The lone and blind multipliers are where the money actually moves. A blind lone wolf that comes in on a carried hole can be worth more than the previous six holes combined — which is the entire point of playing it.
In Battle Tees
The app tracks the rotation, the picks, the carryovers, and the running points — and the Settle screen turns points into exact payouts.
Wolf can host a stack: run Skins, Nassau or Bingo Bango Bongo on the same scorecard at the same time, with one set of scores feeding every ledger.