Black Tee Golf: The Card Game Designed by Kids — For Real
Every game in this series was made by an adult. A clubhouse manager. A meteorologist. A retired golfer. A California poker player. Adults with decades of golf burned into their brains, designing games that reflected how they experienced the sport.
Not this one.
Black Tee Golf was “designed by kids for kids.” It says so right on the box. And you can tell immediately, because the first thing you notice when you open it isn’t the rules or the card count — it’s the artwork. Every card features art done by children. Not polished. Not focus-grouped. Kid art. The kind of drawings that end up on refrigerators.
And somehow, underneath all that youthful energy, there’s a genuinely well-designed card game with real strategic depth.
What’s in the Box
108 cards with kid-designed artwork, fold-out instructions, and a scorecard printed on the back of the box. The website listed on the instructions — Black-TeeGolf.com — is gone. The phone number carries a 732 area code, which is central New Jersey — Monmouth and Ocean County, the Jersey Shore. Beyond that, the creators left almost no trace. Another ghost in a series full of them.
One detail stood out: “A percentage of Black Tee Golf profit will be donated to various charities.” That line, combined with the kid-designed artwork and the kid-focused branding, suggests this was more than just a game. It was a project — probably connected to a youth program, a school, a community organization, or a family that wanted to involve their kids in building something real.
How It Plays
Black Tee Golf uses a 9-card hand with a hidden stockpile mechanic that creates a genuinely interesting risk-reward tension. Each player gets dealt 9 cards — 7 go into your hand, and 2 are placed face down in front of you as your “stockpile.” You never look at your stockpile cards. They’re blind. They could be your salvation or your downfall.
Numbered cards score at face value (positive points — bad). Face cards carry golf terminology and negative values: Birdie (-1), Eagle (-2), Double Eagle (-3), and Bonus Bag (-5). Your goal is the lowest possible total, so you want those negative cards and you want to dump the high numbers.
On your turn, draw from the deck or discard pile, then swap to improve your hand. But here’s the twist: when you discard, you can discard from your hand or from your stockpile. If you discard a stockpile card, you’re gambling — it might be a 10 you’re happy to dump, or it might be a -5 Bonus Bag you just threw away blind.
And the stockpile cards might match something in your hand. Three of a kind — any three matching cards — scores as 0, regardless of face value. So three 10s in your hand is actually better than two Eagles and a 9, because the 10s zero out while the other hand scores -4 + 9 = 5. The stockpile might complete a set you didn’t know you were building.
When you think your hand is the lowest at the table, you announce “I Fold” — ending the hole for everyone. Stockpile cards get added to hands, scores are tallied. Play 9 or 18 holes.
The Stockpile Gamble
The hidden stockpile is what makes Black Tee Golf mechanically interesting. In most draw-and-swap games, you have complete information about your own hand. You might not know what’s coming off the deck, but you know what you’re holding. Black Tee Golf takes two of your nine cards and hides them from you. Every decision about when to fold is made with incomplete information about your own score.
That’s a surprisingly sophisticated design choice for a game “designed by kids.” Whether the kids came up with that specific mechanic or an adult mentor guided them there, the result is a game that plays differently from everything else in this series. You’re not just managing your hand — you’re managing your uncertainty.
The Jersey Shore Connection
The 732 area code places Black Tee Golf in central New Jersey — the Monmouth and Ocean County coastline. This is a region with deep golf roots. Monmouth County alone has dozens of courses, including some of the most famous in America. Rumson Country Club. Deal Golf & Country Club. Hollywood Golf Club. And just up the road in Eatontown is Monmouth Park, where the horse racing and golf cultures have overlapped for over a century.
A kids-designed golf card game coming out of the Jersey Shore makes sense. This is a place where golf isn’t just a sport — it’s part of the social fabric. Kids grow up around it. They ride along in carts. They putt on practice greens while their parents play the back nine. The game probably came from exactly that kind of environment.
The Card Quality Question
The first thing I noticed was the quality of the cards themselves. Despite the kid artwork — or maybe because of it — the cards have a good feel and weight. Someone invested in the manufacturing. 108 cards is a substantial deck (most games in this series run 48-72 cards), and producing that many at reasonable quality isn’t cheap. Whoever was behind Black Tee Golf took the product seriously even if the branding was playful.
What the box doesn’t say is where the cards were manufactured. No “Made in USA” or “Printed in China” — just silence on origin. The fold-out instructions are well-written and thorough, with strategy tips included. Someone put real thought into making this accessible for younger players while keeping enough depth for adults.
A Game with Heart
What gets me about Black Tee Golf is the story it implies. Somewhere in New Jersey, someone — probably a parent, a teacher, or a youth program leader — got a group of kids to design a card game. The kids did the artwork. The adults (or maybe the kids too) worked out the rules. They manufactured 108-card decks, built a website, set up a phone number, and committed to donating a portion of profits to charity.
The website is gone. The phone number is likely disconnected. The game has virtually no presence online. But the decks exist. The artwork exists. The game plays well. And somewhere, there are kids — now adults — who can say they designed a golf card game that got manufactured and sold.
That’s worth something.
Golf the Card Game takes a different approach — a 4-card layout with the Fore! Card, Wild Cards, and the Mulligan mechanic, designed for all ages from a pool deck in Buffalo. But the impulse is the same one that drove the kids behind Black Tee Golf: love the game, make something, put it out there. Age doesn’t matter. The impulse is universal.
If you know anything about Black Tee Golf — who the kids were, where it came from, what program was behind it — reach out. This is one of the most heartwarming stories in the series, and it deserves to be told in full. Find us at playgtcg.com or on social media.
This post is part of our ongoing series exploring golf card games throughout history. From retired golfers to certified meteorologists to actual children — the love of golf at the table belongs to everyone.