✎

Golf balls, and how they work

Bring an experience home and collect golf balls. Bring a friend, and you both receive ten. That is the whole of it. Everything below explains the rest.

Collecting golf balls, and your membership level

Your golf balls are what you have to spend today. They go up when you bring an experience home, and when your family takes part in the life of your locker. They go down when you trade them in the Den. Nothing else moves them.

Your membership level shows your family's involvement with the Fairway Friends, and it only ever goes up. There are three membership levels, and three ranks inside each one.

Two things grow, and only one of them can go down

Your golf balls and your membership level come from exactly the same place: what your family does. Bringing an experience home, taking part, coming back, bringing a friend. Every one of those puts golf balls in your bag, and the same act moves you along the front nine.

The difference is what happens afterwards. Golf balls are yours to trade, so your bag rises and falls as you use it. Your membership level is the record of everything your family has ever done, so it only rises. Trading never touches it.

The front nine journey

Nine holes in all. You move up through them by your activities in your locker, over time and at your own pace. Trade every golf ball you have, and your membership level and your rank stay exactly as they were, for life.

Your rank is forever

Every hole you reach is yours for good. No season resets it, we never take it back, and if we ever change how balls are earned, no family moves down and no balance goes backwards. Your golf balls are yours to trade whenever you like, and the only person who can trade them is you.

Completing the front nine

Every hole your golfer reaches earns them a club crest, engraved with their own name, to download and keep. Collect all nine.

The Legend crest is the one we make for real. It is stitched, it is available to purchase, and we will send it to your address. The stitched crest is not personalised; the name belongs to the ones you download.

The Den is always open

It is where golf balls are traded. Everything in it comes from collecting golf balls and from nothing else. The number of golf balls needed is the same as the numbers on the front nine, so you never have to work anything out.

Your child never signs in to anything

No account. No profile. No password. When something is available for your golfer, we tell you, and it is you who gives it to them. That is how every gift arrives: not from us, but from you.

The walled garden, your kids' own space to enjoy the Fairway Friends

Your golfer enters their own private corner of Whispering Pines, designed for them alone: the walled garden. Once they are in, they stay in. Leaving the walled garden needs a grown-up, and a small calculation to exit. It is a door only you should open, and it is not a substitute for keeping an eye on them.

Serendipity balls

Sometimes the Fairway Friends find extra golf balls out in the fairway, hidden in the bushes, the bunkers and the water hazards, that just happen to have your family's name on them. Sometimes they find two, sometimes up to five. We never know what they are going to come back with, and they arrive by surprise. They cannot be asked for, triggered or hurried, which is rather the point of them. That is why they are called Serendipity balls.

The Fairway Friends honour system

Some things we cannot see, like whether you read the story with your golfer curled up next to you. So we ask you, and we believe you. Tick it when you have done it. That is the Fairway Friends honour system, and it is the only kind we want.

Collect the stories

A song or a Listen-Along earns 3. An audiobook or a read-along earns 7. A storybook earns 15. A bundle earns 30. And when you complete all six formats of one adventure we add 50, because finishing a collection deserves a trophy.

Spread the word

Share the song, a badge or a story page as often as you like. A share earns nothing on its own. When a friend opens a locker from your link, that is 10 for you and 10 for them. It is always double.

Show up

Your first 5 balls are waiting the moment you open your locker. Visit in four different weeks of a month and earn 3. Take on Ace’s Challenge of the Month for 3 more. Log your golfer’s real firsts, first swing, first putt, first course, and earn 2 apiece. Every Clubhouse anniversary earns 5.

The fine print

A storybook counts the same in softcover or hardcover. A bundle that arrives as its separate parts still counts as the bundle. Each order is counted once and only once, however many times our systems talk to each other.

Your invite link carries your own code, and it is the only code that credits you. Sharing itself is free and unlimited, and it earns nothing until somebody walks in. There is no limit on how many friends you bring.

Visiting in four different weeks earns its 3 once a month, and Ace’s Challenge of the Month the same. The real firsts are five in all: first swing, first putt, first course, first re-listen, first friend made. The Clubhouse anniversary earns its 5 each year.

Not yet, and we will not pretend otherwise. Three things on our list are not earning yet, and this page will say so until they are: a reward for reviewing an adventure you own, a reward for a friend who joins before they buy anything, and the double week around your young golfer’s birthday. When each one is ready it will appear here first.