Fast Golf (1977): The Card-and-Board Hybrid That Tried to Do It All

In 1977, Western Publishing Company — the same outfit that gave the world Little Golden Books, Pictionary, and Gold Key Comics — released a little golf game called Fast Golf. It wasn’t quite a card game, It wasn’t quite a board game, It was both, and that’s what makes it interesting.

The Game on the Table

Fast Golf came with 54 cards, two golf ball tokens, a small cardboard gameboard, and a set of instructions. The board laid out a 9-hole course, and the cards did the work of moving your ball from tee to green to hole. Two or four players — teams of two sitting across from each other — competed for the lowest total strokes over nine holes.

Here’s the twist: this wasn’t a pure card game. You needed the board. Your golf ball token physically moved along the course as you played cards from your hand. It lived in that in-between space — too much board game to be a card game, too much card game to be a board game.

How It Played

Each player held 5 cards. On your turn, you played one card face up and drew a replacement. If you had the right card for your situation — a Drive card on the fairway, a Putt card on the green — your ball moved. If you didn’t? That’s a Whiff. A full swing and a miss. Your card still got played, it still counted as a stroke, but your ball sat right where it was.

The Whiff mechanic was actually the heart of the game. Every card you played was a stroke on your scorecard whether your ball moved or not. So the strategy was about hand management — playing the right cards at the right time while burning as few wasted strokes as possible.

There were some nice details too. Dog leg holes forced you to land on a specific corner space before turning. Overshoot it and you went out of bounds with a penalty stroke. Water hazards pushed your ball back to the far side. Sand traps required a special “Out of Sand Trap” card to escape. And two rare cards — the Lucky Drive and Lucky Putt — gave you instant gratification by jumping your ball straight to the green or straight into the hole.

One subtle rule stood out: teammates couldn’t discuss strategy. You sat across from your partner, watched them play, and just hoped they had the right card. That silent partnership added a layer of tension you don’t often see in casual games from this era.

The Publisher Behind It

Western Publishing Company was no small-time operation. Founded in 1907 in Racine, Wisconsin by brothers Edward and Albert Wadewitz, the company grew from a small print shop purchased for $2,504 into one of the largest publishers in America. By the 1960s, Western was the biggest creator and publisher of children’s books in the United States, the largest producer of paper-based children’s games, and the biggest creator of comic books.

You probably grew up with their work and didn’t even know it. Little Golden Books? Western Publishing. Gold Key Comics (Star Trek, Magnus Robot Fighter, Turok)? Western Publishing. Pictionary, which became a cultural phenomenon in the late 1980s? Western Publishing. They even produced games under license for companies like Hasbro and Tonka.

Fast Golf card game came out during a period when Western was still a powerhouse — pre-Mattel acquisition (1979), pre-financial troubles (1990s), and well before Hasbro bought their entire games and puzzles division for $105 million in 1994. By the time Western restructured into Golden Books Family Entertainment in 1996, the game-making era was over. The company eventually went through bankruptcy and was acquired by Classic Media and Random House in 2001.

Fast Golf card game was a small game from a giant company — one product in a massive catalog. But it shows that even the big publishers were experimenting with how to bring golf to the kitchen table.

What Worked (and What Didn’t)

The Whiff mechanic was genuinely clever. The idea that every card counts as a stroke — whether your ball moves or not — created real decisions. Do you burn a bad card now or hold it and hope for something better? That’s a meaningful choice, even in a simple game.

But the board limited it. Only one course. Only 9 holes. And that board meant you couldn’t toss it in your pocket or play it at a restaurant. It needed table space, tokens, and setup — all things that pull a game away from the casual, pick-up-and-play feel that the best card games deliver.

This is the fundamental tension in golf game design. Do you simulate the course with a board and tokens, or do you let the cards do all the work? Fast Golf tried to split the difference. It’s a respectable attempt from an era when hybrid designs were common, but it also shows why pure card games — ones that fit in a pocket (like Pocket-Size’s Golf Card Game from the 1960’s) and need nothing but the deck — tend to have longer legs.

Finding One Today

Fast Golf still surfaces online occasionally. Complete copies with the board, tokens, and all 54 cards can be found on eBay, usually in the $5 to $15 range. It’s not a rare collector’s piece, but it’s a fun artifact from the golden age of kitchen-table games.

From 1977 to Today

Fast Golf is one of more than a hundred attempts over the decades to turn golf into a tabletop game. Some used boards, Some used dice, Some used elaborate simulations. The ones that endure tend to be the simplest — the ones that capture the feeling of golf without needing a game board to do it. Checkout Pokolf from 1979, guessing Fast Golf card game inspired them.

That’s the approach we took with Golf the Card Game. No board. No tokens. Just cards, strategy, and the thrill of chasing the lowest score. Easy to learn, fun for the whole family, and it goes wherever you go — something Fast Golf card game aspired to but couldn’t quite pull off with a board in the box.

Got a copy of Fast Golf sitting in a closet? We’d love to see it. Tag us on social media or visit playgtcg.com.

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This post is part of our ongoing series exploring vintage golf card games throughout history. From the hybrid board-card games of the 1970s to today’s modern card games, the love of golf at the table has never faded.