The honour is the right to play first from the tee. In match play it goes to whoever won the previous hole; in stroke play, to whoever scored lowest on it; and on the very first tee, before any hole has been played, it comes down to a draw, a published starting sheet, or whatever the group agrees.
It is one of the smallest questions in the game, and one of the oldest: four of you walk off the last green, nobody moves, and somebody asks, “Whose honour is it?” We spent some time with it while making our plate called “The Honour”, and found the answer rooted in the very first written rules of golf.
What does “the honour” mean in golf?
The honour is the right to play first from the teeing area. That is all it is. But the way you earn it tells you something about the spirit of the game.
In match play, the honour goes to whoever won the previous hole. Win a hole and you tee off first on the next. If you halve a hole, nothing changes: whoever had the honour keeps it. It is a small reward for doing well, a moment of being first, and it carries a little pressure too, because everyone is watching you go.
Stroke play works on the same idea, but with scores instead of holes won. The player with the lowest score on the previous hole plays first at the next tee. If two players tie on that hole, the one who had the honour on the previous tee keeps it. So the honour follows good play around the course, and it can pass from one player to another several times in a round.
Then there is the very first tee, where nobody has played a hole yet. Here the Rules of Golf leave it to the draw or to the order of play set by the Committee, or, in a friendly game, to whatever the group agrees. A coin toss, a tee thrown in the air, or simply “after you” all do the job. In competitions with a published draw, the starting sheet decides it for you.
One detail catches people out. In a competition played off handicap, the honour is still worked out from the gross score on the hole, not the net. Your handicap helps your total, but it does not buy you the right to go first.
Who plays first after the tee shot?
The honour only settles the tee shot. Once everyone is away, a different principle takes over: the player whose ball is farthest from the hole plays first. That is the ordinary order of play for the rest of the hole, in match play and stroke play alike.
The logic is practical as much as polite. The player furthest back has the clearest view of the hole, and the players nearer it are not standing in a line of play or a putting line. Nobody gets hit by a ball, and nobody gets distracted while lining up a shot. If you have ever waited while a playing partner well behind you took their time, you know why the custom took hold.
Where it all began: Leith, 1744
The oldest surviving written rules of golf date from 1744. The gentlemen who played at Leith Links, near Edinburgh, and who called themselves the Gentlemen Golfers, drew up a set of thirteen articles for a competition for a silver club. That group later became the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. Their rules, headed “Articles and Laws in Playing at Golf”, are the ancestor of everything the game now runs on.
Those thirteen rules are short and blunt. The first one tells you to tee your ball within a club length of the hole you have just played out. That detail matters for our question. In the early game there was no separate teeing ground set apart from the green. You finished a hole and stepped, more or less, to the next spot. The tee was tied to the hole you had just left.
The same set of articles also states that the player whose ball lies farthest from the hole is to play first. So the idea behind the order of play, that distance decides who goes next, is there in the earliest known code. What the 1744 articles do not give us, at least in the form we can point to, is the modern wording about the honour, where the winner of the last hole tees off first. We have not found a source that fixes the date on which that custom became a written rule or first got the name “honour”, so we are not going to give you one. Anyone who tells you a precise date for it is guessing.
What we can say is that the Leith code did not stay in Leith. In 1754 a group of St Andrews golfers, the Society of St Andrews Golfers, adopted essentially the same rules with small changes. From there the game’s rules spread, grew and were argued over for more than two centuries, with the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews eventually becoming the game’s rule-making authority alongside the USGA in America. The two bodies now write the Rules of Golf together.
What happens if you play out of turn
Every golfer has done it. The player who should have gone first is still hunting for a tee, and you are ready, so you go. Is that a crime?
Under the current Rules of Golf, which took their modern form in 2019, the answer differs between the two formats.
In match play, playing out of turn carries no penalty, but your opponent has the right to cancel your stroke and make you play again in the correct order. The logic is that in a head-to-head game, the order can be a real advantage or disadvantage. A player who sees you hit a poor shot first, for example, learns something before their own. So the choice to insist on the order belongs to the opponent.
In stroke play, you are in a different position. Everyone is playing against the whole field, not against the person beside you, so the order between two players gives neither an edge over the rest. Playing out of turn is not penalised, and the game has, in fact, moved to encourage it. The one thing you must not do is agree with another player to play out of turn deliberately to give one of you an advantage. That is a breach and it is penalised.
What is ready golf?
Here is where the custom has changed most in recent years. The 2019 Rules of Golf state that in stroke play it is perfectly acceptable, and recommended, to play “ready golf” in a safe and responsible way. The rule was framed as a way to keep the game moving.
Ready golf is simple. If you are ready and it is safe, you play, even if a ball farther out has not yet been hit. The player who is still deciding on a club, or walking across to their ball, does not hold up the group. On the tee, the same spirit applies. If the player with the honour is still tying a shoelace or finding a scorecard, and someone else is ready and it is safe to hit, they can go ahead.
Some things do not change. Safety comes first: nobody should play if another player might be in range. And in match play, the older order still stands unless your opponent is content for you to go ahead. So if you are in a head-to-head game, ask. A quick “Mind if I go?” costs nothing.
We rather like how this fits together. The honour is not a rule to be enforced with a stern face. It is a courtesy that got written down, and that then had to make room for the reality that a round of golf is meant to be enjoyable and not to take an afternoon. The order of play says who ought to go. Ready golf says what to do when they are not ready. Between them, a friendly round keeps its manners and its pace.
Why we drew the moment
We were drawn to this scene because it holds a lot in a small space. Somebody has just won a hole, and now they step up first. There is a nod, a bit of quiet, and the sense of a game with a long memory. Nothing dramatic is happening. That is rather the point, and it is what we wanted to put on a shirt.
Our plate “The Honour” is digital artwork in the engraving style. It is not an antique print and it does not show any real course. It is our own picture of that small ceremony on the tee, made for people who enjoy the old game and its habits. If this article has made you look twice at the next tee you stand on, you can see the plate on our site, along with the rest of the Links & Oak designs.
And the next time nobody moves on the tee, you will know what to say. Who won the last hole? They have the honour. If they are not quite ready, and it is safe, someone else can play on.
See it in the collection: The The Honour design
