In an ideal world you could find golfers of your skill level to make your league play competitive and interesting. The real world, though, is that players in a golf league most of the time have different abilities. Using handicapping makes up for the fact that we don’t play in situations where all or most golfers are of equal skill.
Unless you live in a state that is part of the United States southern border where golf is player all year, golf leagues generally last a few months. There might be 15 to 25 weekly league events depending on your location. It is this fact – that there aren’t enough play dates, and therefore scores – that tends to move golf leagues away from using the USGA method of handicapping. In the USGA method, you must have a minimum of five scores before your handicap can be calculated and your ten best scores (more accurately your handicap differentials) out of your most recent 20 scores are eventually used for calculating your handicap. Well, if your league only has 15 events, your into your sixth event when you have a calculated handicap available and you never get to where you have 20 scores from which the 10 best are used to calculate your golf league handicap. So most leagues choose their own custom method of calculating a handicap, which usually means they use less scores. Leagues often look at the most recent 3 to 10 scores, throwing out some of the highest, to formulate their golf league handicaps.
We have heard of various methods that people use to calculate golf league handicaps:
- paper and pencil (imagine the tedium!)
- spreadsheet (easier, but still complicated)
- software (easiest)
Our golf league handicap software calculates handicaps in virtually any way you want and also keeps event as well as season-to-date results and standings. It makes life for the league secretary, or whoever is doing the work of the league secretary, so much easier! We also offer Handicap System if all you want is golf league handicapping.
Using golf league handicap software makes competition fairer and more exciting for your players and the job of league secretary much more easy, efficient and less labor intensive. What more could you want?
Got a favorite group of gal golfers? Need more exercise? Want to play golf weekly?
Sounds like a Ladies Golf League in the making! Think of it… Once a week, heading to the golf course, playing a round of golf with old friends and meeting new ones. Getting started is easy with our League Manager software. You can use League Manager to make your schedule, to run scorecards, to email your players and to create a basic website where you can post weekly results.
Having a hard time convincing anyone to serve as league secretary? Speed keys help you enter scores quickly and accurately. Report templates are built into the program. Tech support is only a phone call (or email) away for six months! An online knowledgebase and support forum make it easy to find answers or ask other users how they do it.
Get started today!
There could be as many ways to do golf league scoring as there are golf leagues. But generally speaking, golf league scoring fall into one or more of these categories:
Match play leagues for individuals
- x point(s) per hole won (net or gross score)
- x point(s) per best net on 9 or 18 holes (leagues tend to be 9 holes)
- x point(s) per most holes won
Match play leagues for teams
- x point(s) per hole won (team net or gross score)
- x point(s) per best team net on 9 or 18 holes (leagues tend to be 9 holes) – variation: compare best x balls out of y players per team
- x point(s) per most holes won comparing team total hole score
- x point(s) per hole for team best ball
- x point(s) per best team net based on adding up best ball for each hole
- x point(s) per most holes won comparing team best ball for each hole
Many leagues combine both individual play and team play for their golf league scoring.
Play versus course
Some leagues earn different number of points depending on net score on a hole (Stableford). Players might earn a point for a par, 2 points for a birdie, etc. Each league can determine what the earned points would be. Some award points to the best ball on the team for each hole.
Play versus other players
Some leagues award points for each player beaten and/or tied. Still others award points based on your finish amongst all players. First place receives x points, second player y points, etc. Typically this is based on net score.
Miscellaneous
Some league award points for showing up.
These are just a few of the ways of setting up golf league scoring. You can have any number of permutations and combinations of these ways of awarding points.
Please see our golf league software which handles these various ways of scoring a golf league as well as handicapping.