Run a traveling golf club without a home course

A traveling golf club’s year: twenty-eight members, ten courses

Before the season

Create the club, import the roster with handicaps, create ten outings, each at its own course and tee time, and one order-of-merit standing counting the best six of ten.

Each outing

Registration opens Monday with a cap and a waitlist, entry fees are paid by card at sign-up, groups go out Friday and the host pro shop gets the tee sheet by email at 06:00.

A new course

Pick it from the course database and its tees, ratings and slopes come with it, so playing handicaps are right before anyone arrives. Build the course yourself if it is not there.

A guest

Added to the outing with a handicap, or with none and ranked on a one-day handicap worked out from the card they just played.

The last Saturday

Close out, the standing names the champion, and the prize list and season standings print from the Report Center.

A different course every outing

Each outing is a date, a course and a tee time. Parful carries more than 30,000 courses with their tee sets, course ratings and slope ratings, and a builder for anywhere it does not cover. Playing handicaps are worked out per course and tee, so a member who played off 14 last month plays off 16 this month without the secretary touching anything.

The host club gets the tee sheet by email at 06:00 on the day, built from the entry list. Booking the tee times is still a phone call or the course’s own website; Parful runs everything after the booking.

• check_circleEvery outing scores gross, net and Stableford from the one card; a scramble, four-ball or match play round is a competition assigned to the day

Handicaps with no pro shop to keep them

A club with no course has nobody at a counter keeping the handicap list, so most traveling clubs end up with a spreadsheet and one member who guards it. In Parful the handicap sits on the roster and the club keeps it: entered by hand, imported from a spreadsheet or updated in bulk, with every change in the player’s history.

Official numbers depend on the country: in the United States a club with no course can hold handicaps through its state or regional golf association; in Britain and Ireland a player’s official handicap usually stays with a home club or an independent golfer scheme. Parful records that number under the player’s country’s system, and the club’s own figure is the one play uses. No live link to a national handicap service is switched on today.

• check_circleEvery round is recorded, and a member with a Parful account also gets a Parful handicap worked out from their rounds

Sign-up, entry fees and the tee sheet

Members register from their phones against a cap, with a waitlist for the month twenty-eight places meet thirty-two players, and guests sign up alongside them. Entry fees go through the club store by card; the buyer pays one service fee at checkout so the club receives its full price, or the club absorbs it. Groups and tee times are generated from the entry list.

On the day one player per group scores in the phone browser from a QR code, PIN or link, with no app and no account. The live leaderboard moves as holes land, and members run their own skins and other side games from the same card.

• check_circleGreen fees stay between the club and the course; Parful collects what the club charges its own members

One standing across ten courses

Close-out is one step: the day’s prizes resolve, the standing moves, every round is recorded and the public results page is live while people are still in the host club’s bar.

The order of merit is a standing: points by finishing position, a Stableford league that sums the season, or your own points table. It can count each member’s best rounds rather than all of them, which is how a club forgives the days people miss, and divisions run their own races.

• check_circleA singles or doubles knockout runs across the season too, each round of matches assigned to an outing and resolved from its cards
• check_circleThe season rolls over with the roster and handicaps intact; next year’s outings start by duplicating this year’s

Worth knowing before you set the club up

• check_circleUp to 16 active members is free with no time limit. Bigger clubs start on a 30-day full-access trial, then pay $9.99 a month, with every feature at every size.
• check_circleParful runs the golf a group plays: members, outings, scoring, competitions and standings. It is not course or facility software, so there is no public tee-time booking, no pro-shop till and no course operations.
• check_circleDues are tracked, not collected. Parful records who has paid and who is about to lapse and sends reminders; collect the money the way the club already does.