golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping ...

, a gimme is a shot that the other players agree can count automatically without being played. When a player has only a very short putt left to play, other players may grant a gimme (i.e., one stroke is counted), but the ball is not played. A gimme is a time-saving convention under the

tacit assumption A tacit assumption or implicit assumption is an assumption that underlies a logical argument, course of action, decision, or judgment that is not explicitly voiced nor necessarily understood by the decision maker or judge. These assumptions may b ...

that the putt would not have been missed, e.g., when the ball is only a few inches from the hole. Gimmes are not allowed by the rules in stroke play, though the practice is common in casual matches. However, in

match play Match play is a scoring system for golf in which a player, or team, earns a point for each hole in which they have bested their opponents; as opposed to stroke play, in which the total number of strokes is counted over one or more rounds of 18 h ...

, either player may formally ''concede'' a stroke, a hole, or the entire match at any time, and this may not be refused or withdrawn. A player in match play will generally concede a tap-in or other short putt by his or her opponent. The word is a colloquial contraction of the phrase "give me".

References

*Carroll, Timothy J
"The 'gimme' still remains in play at Ryder Cup"
''The Wall Street Journal'', September 21, 2006. {{Golf-stub Golf terminology

See also

References