Comment by dfritsch

The golf part is that you can only get the most points by writing the shortest regex possible. However, I think the game avoids just giving a score based on the number of characters. To do that, you would be required to match all on the left and none on the right (the equivalent of actually getting the golf ball in the hole). This game lets you pick up your ball whenever you want and scores you based on distance to the hole. For the golfers, think of it more like a closest-to-the-hole competition than the more common stroke play.