Golf and app words, explained

You do not need to know any of this to run a trip - the app does the arithmetic. It is here for the moments when a number on screen prompts a question, or when someone in the bar wants to know how a tie was settled.

Course handicap

The strokes you get on one particular course, from one particular set of tees, before the format is taken into account. It comes from your handicap index adjusted for how hard that course actually plays: your index multiplied by the slope rating and divided by 113, plus the difference between the course rating and par.

The app works this out for every player from the tee they are playing, which is why two players with the same index can get different strokes if one is off the white tees and the other off the red. It carries the exact figure forward rather than rounding at this stage.

Playing handicap

The strokes you actually receive in the competition you are playing. It is your course handicap (see the glossary) multiplied by the allowance for the format, rounded once at the very end. Each format carries its own allowance under the World Handicap System, so the same course handicap gives you one number in a singles competition and a different one in foursomes.

This is the number on the badge beside a player’s name on the tee sheet, and the one the scorecard uses.

Stableford

A format where you collect points on each hole instead of counting every stroke. A net par is two points, a net birdie three, a net bogey one, and anything worse scores nothing. Because a ruined hole costs you no more than a blank, you can pick the ball up and still have a round worth playing, which is why most societies use it.

Countback

How a tie is settled without anyone going back out. The tied players’ back nine is compared first, then the back six, then the back three, and finally the last hole. The first of those to separate them decides it.

The app applies this automatically and shows the working on the results page for anyone who tied, so the outcome is plain rather than something you have to defend.

Order of Merit

A season-long table that adds up how members have done across a run of fixtures, rather than on a single day. You choose how it counts, whether that is every round or the best few of the year, and the standings keep themselves up to date as each event finishes.

Compliance score

A percentage showing how well a generated tee sheet met the rules you set. A rule marked Essential is never broken, so any draw you are offered already honours those. What moves the number is the band just below - the rules you marked as mattering a lot but not absolutely. The gentlest priorities are advisory and are not scored at all, so a draw can ignore one and still read 100%.