Golf Scores and The Score Card

Keeping Score

The golf scores achieved during the game are the measure of your success playing that game. One of the key tenets of golf is honesty, and keeping accurate scores is a fundamental part of that. The scorecard is used to keep track of the score for each hole for each member of the group.

Keeping Track of Golf Scores

Why do we need to keep track of our scores? Like other competitive sports, golf involves keeping track of your achievements through the recording of your scores. And yes, golf is competitive. In fact, golf is a highly competitive sport, and has been since it was first invented. You are either competing against someone else, in which case you will need to keep score, or you are competing against yourself, in which case you will still need to keep score! Even if you never played golf with anyone else, you would still want to know if you were improving or not. Golf scores answer that question. (By the way it's a lot more fun playing golf with someone else.)

Having said that, I would be the first to admit that golf has a relatively complex system for recording golf scores. Basically, everyone seems to agree that scores obtained during a game should be recorded on a score card. After that, things tend to get a little fuzzy and the actual number that you might record is not necessarily what you made. Are you confused yet? Believe it or not there is a very good reason why the score that you actually made may not be the one that you record.

Before I go further, there are a few things that need to be made clear. If you only golf in a "recreational" way with a friend or two, you would mark your scores on a score card, but you do not need to worry about recording any scores. Recording golf scores is primarily related to establishing a golf handicap. You would need a handicap to be able to play golf "competitively". If you are a member of a golf club, it is likely that you would be required to record all your golf scores for handicap purposes. Some clubs that you might want to visit actually require that you have a minimum handicap before they will allow you to play.

Back to what you actually score. One of the fundamentals of golf is “fairness”. Thus when you have a horrible score on a hole that does not fairly indicate your skill level, there is something called Equitable Stroke Control (ESC). This allows you to adjust your score for that hole in accordance with strict rules. Also, when you are playing someone who is a much better player you need some way to take the different skill levels into account. To equalize your chances against this player, the Handicap system was invented.

It is everything that leads up to establishing a golf handicap that can get complicated.

The Score Card

A typical score card is shown below (this is the card for my club). The first thing to notice is the white portion of the card (See the next graphic). This is where you enter the score actually made by each person at each hole. There is a spot on the left to enter their name (often just first name). Whoever is marking the card must be certain to enter the right score for the right person. This can sometimes get confusing when they are calling their scores all at once, especially when the marker is also trying to remember their own score. The hole number is shown in the top line of this white space. You will also see that there are five lines of different colors at the top of the card. These are the tee choices, and the colors can vary between courses. In this case they are gold, blue, white, green, and red, with the gold being the longest, and the red being the shortest tees(the actual lengths(in yards) are shown at the right of each color line, for each nine and for the total 18).

The distance of each hole, measured from the middle of the teeing ground (for each color tee) to the centre of the green, is shown in yards (A few course show the distance to the front of the green). As well, the par value of the hole for both men and ladies is shown (men at the top of the white space and the ladies at the bottom). The grey rows (one above and one below the scoring area) show the relative difficulty of each hole for the men (on the top) and the ladies (on the bottom) – 1 being the most difficult and 18 the easiest. This is called the hole handicap, and is used when strokes are given between players when they are competing against each other. As explained in the Handicap section , each golfer develops and plays to a handicap.

The basis for this handicap is a measure of their golf scores on a number of games plus a couple of other factors. If someone with a handicap of 10 were to play someone else with a handicap of 20, then the first person would "give strokes" to the second person (10 in this case). These strokes would be effective on the first ten holes in order of difficulty. Normally the card would be marked to show these holes – e.g. circle the handicap number or the hole number. Thus the handicap holes 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 on the front nine, and, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 on the back nine would be marked. The reason that there are odd numbers on the front and even numbers on the back is the desire to balance the overall difficulty of each side.

You will also note that there are both course ratings and slope ratings for both men and ladies for each set of tees. These ratings will be explained in the Handicap section.

The back of the card includes some notes on etiquette and defines the "Local Rules". These rules may be amplification of, or in addition to, the normal Rules of Golf. It also includes spots for the date, scorer's name and signature, and the name and signature of the player (if a single player's card).

Terminology

There are commonly used terms to indicate how a player scored on a hole. The scorecard shows the par value for the hole, which is the value that a proficient player will try to achieve. However for those who might not be so proficient, or who are even better than the proficient player, the following terms are useful to immediately identify the actual golf scores achieved. The table below shows these terms and what they mean.

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