My friends just invented the nerdiest golf game imaginable, and it's shockingly great

Here's a question nobody asked: How do you combine medieval fantasy (think of the warring kingdoms on Game of Thrones), strategy board games like Risk and competitive golf?

You'll be thrilled and/or disgusted to know that thanks to my friends Galen and Colin, we now have an answer, and that answer is "The Lords Of Hillandale."

It all started with a map, but before I show you that, you have to know about Hillandale Golf Course in Durham, NC. It is, in many ways, the greatest golf course on earth, with the greatest people, and if you charted out where I spend the hours of my life, "home" would be first, "Hillandale" would be second and everything else would be noise. This is also true, I believe, of my eight closest Hillandale golf friends, who earned that title by the sickos-recognize-sickos principle. We play constantly, whether in leagues or just for fun, and our daily group texts ("The Birdie Bunch") number in the dozens. Some of us are very good, like Ryan, the three-time defending club champ, and some like me are still fighting hard for single digits.

This latest madness started with that map. Colin commissioned it, and he was nice enough to give us all a copy:

I'm not a massive fantasy guy, but like a lot of newbies to the genre, I loved Game of Thrones until it got terrible, so this was right up my alley. But "buying a frame for it and hanging it in my shed" is as far as I planned to go.

But our friend Galen? Galen's brain started working. (Well, Galen's brain is always working, particularly on golf ... it's how he invents concepts like "Moron Corner.") While the rest of us saw a map, Galen saw the origins of a new game. The fact that there were nine of us ended up being perfect, as you'll see. It was also perfect that Colin designed a web app where we can enter our conquests and keep track of the game, and I'll sprinkle some images of that throughout.

Here's how "The Lords of Hillandale" works:

+ Each player is assigned "territory" based on a draft. In our case, because we had nine players, it was two holes apiece. If you have six players, you could do three each, and even if you had a number that wasn't divisible into 18, there are solutions; you could give the weaker players more holes, or give better draft status to players getting fewer holes.

+ In our case, we did a snake draft based on our winter league standings, with the lowest in the standings picking first.

+ Every time you play the course, you have a chance to expand your territory by making birdie on an adjacent hole. So if you draft the 8th hole, you could add the 7th or 9th hole to your kingdom with a birdie. (Holes 18 and 1 are considered adjacent.) Similarly, you can have your kingdom stolen if the players who own no. 7 or no. 9 make birdie on 8. This has already happened to me (the club champ, Ryan, birdied no. 2 and usurped my throne), and my people have sworn revenge.

+ There is a *ton* of draft strategy. Those of us who think about this stuff too deeply ended up landing on the idea of drafting very hard holes with easier holes close by for easy expansion, but even that's a little scary, because if you lose your hard hole somehow, you may never get it back. Needless to say, the players adjacent to you matter a lot too.

+ Yes, there is a lot of "hole" talk inherent to this game, and no, it wasn't long before the jokes started flying. We are not mature people; maybe you'll do better, but probably not.

+ Here's the brilliance of the game: it's constantly happening. You don't have to juggle schedules, or have a full foursome, because any time you're on the course, the game is on. Our only rules are that you have to play at least nine holes for the round to count, and you can't play any hole more than once in a round.

+ If there's a shortcoming of the game, it's that it takes place on one course, and obviously it helps if you have a group of people who play a lot of golf there.

+ If you lose a hole, you can get it back by making birdie there. So now that Ryan has turned my people on hole no. 2 into refugees, I can get it back with a birdie, but until I do, I can't expand to nos. 3 or 1.

+ The ending of the game is still up for debate. It will end when one player has conquered all 18 holes, but we know that could take a long time. In order to speed it along to some degree, the current rule is that once a player gets knocked out totally (loses all holes on the board) three times, he can no longer re-enter the map. I'm on the opposite side of this rule, because I think it's kind of fun if the game goes on indefinitely, but your mileage may vary, and I'm sure there are plenty of rules you could add to make the game faster. (If you don't birdie your hole within 20 days, it's now up for grabs for any adjacent player who makes par? A player only has to own 10 holes to win the game? Net birdies instead of actual birdies?)

It's not like I needed something to help me care more about golf, but this game has already added some juice to my rounds. When I get to a hole I can conquer with birdie, I am absolutely primed—I want that land so bad. Every time I play no. 2 now, I'm basically a freedom fighter in my mind, trying to overthrow the imperialist pretender Ryan and restore my people to their homeland.

I would imagine roughly 95% of you will roll your eyes at this game, but I also know there's a rogue 5% out there whose minds are already running wild. So if you've got a group whose vibes meet at the confluence of "golf nerd" and "nerd nerd," then my friend, this one's for you.