In match play, the player, or team, earns a point for each hole in which they have bested their opponents.
Multi-round tournaments may enforce a "cut" to reduce the size of the field for later rounds.
Any player who returns a score higher than the cut mark takes no further part in the tournament.
Different tournaments have various formats for their playoffs, ranging from another full round, as employed in the U.S. Open, through to a three- or four-hole playoff as used in the PGA Championship and the Open Championship (British Open), to straightforward sudden death, which is used in most tournaments including the Masters Tournament and all other regular PGA Tour and European Tour events.
One method of breaking ties commonly used in amateur competitions, especially when a playoff is not practical, and used in professional tournaments to seed players in knockout rounds (such as the World Super 6 in Perth, Australia) is a scorecard "count back", whereby the player with the lowest cumulative score over the last 18, 9, 6, 3, or 1 hole(s) is declared the winner.