Competition structures
Parful runs thisDead heats and prize splits
Also called Dead heat, Prize split, Tied prize, One prize per player, Multiple winners.
A dead heat is a tie for a prize that no tiebreak has broken. The prize is then split between the tied players, paid in full to each, or decided by the committee. A related question is whether one player can take more than one prize in a day: on Parful club outings they can by default.
- Dead heat options
- Split the prize, pay it in full to each, or the committee decides
- Club outings
- Multiple prizes to one player by default
- One prize per player
- Opt-in per outing; priority low gross, low net, Stableford
- Events
- One prize per player by default, same priority order
- Ties
- Surfaced on the winner cards, never auto-resolved
- Frozen
- The policy is frozen with the published results
What a dead heat is
Two players post a net 68, the competition is not set to countback, or countback fails to separate them after the eighteenth. They share first. The leaderboard has done its job; what remains is a prize question, and prize questions belong to the committee. There are three answers in common use.
- Split: the prizes for the tied positions are pooled and divided equally. Two players tied for first share the first and second prizes between them, so each gets half of the two combined.
- Full each: every tied player receives the full prize for the position. Generous, simple, and the usual answer when the prize is a voucher rather than cash.
- Committee decides: the tie is resolved by hand, by a playoff, a chip-off or a ruling, and the prize goes where the committee says.
One prize per player
A separate rule governs a player who wins more than one category on the same day. A 6-handicapper who shoots 70 might have the low gross, the low net and the best Stableford score at once. Some clubs let that player take all three. Many hand the lower prizes down the field so that more people go home with something.
Handing down needs a priority order. The usual one, and the one Parful uses, is low gross first, then low net, then Stableford. The clear winner of low gross is removed from the low net pool, the clear winner of low net is removed from the Stableford pool, and each remaining category is re-run without them. Only a clear winner is removed: a player who is tied for a higher prize stays in the pools below it, because nothing has been awarded yet.
The rankings themselves never change. A player handed down still shows first on the net leaderboard; only the winner card moves, and it says who was skipped and why.
Club outings and Events differ
On a Parful club outing the default is that a player who tops every category wins every category. One prize per player was a house rule at one club, not a platform rule, so it is an opt-in switch on each outing with the priority order alongside it. Whatever the switch says when the outing is closed out is frozen with the published results, so editing the setting later never moves a completed prize table; to apply a change the admin reopens and closes out again.
On the standalone Events product the default is the opposite: one prize per player, with the same priority order. A charity or corporate organizer almost always wants the prize table spread across the field, and an organizer who wants multiple prizes to one player switches it off in the event settings. Events also record the dead-heat payout policy (split, full each, or admin decides) in the rules alongside the tiebreak method.
How Parful runs it
When an outing is closed out, Parful builds a winner card for each category. A clear winner shows one name; a tie shows every tied name and the shared value, marked unresolved. Parful does not pick a winner from a tie by lot or by name, and it does not compute a cash split. The committee decides the dead heat and the card records the tie honestly until it does.
With one prize per player switched on, the cards are built in priority order and each card says who was excluded and which prize claimed them, so a member can see that they were second on net because the net winner had already taken low gross. Countback, where the competition is set to it, is applied on the leaderboard before the cards are built, so a countback-separated pair is not a dead heat.
Worked example
A worked example: one prize per player on a club outing
Five players, three prizes, one prize per player switched on with the priority order low gross, low net, Stableford. Handicaps in brackets.
| Player | Gross | Net | Stableford | Low gross card | Low net card | Stableford card |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ana (5) | 72 | 67 | 41 | Winner | Excluded: won low gross | Excluded: won low gross |
| Ben (14) | 84 | 70 | 38 | Second on 70 | ||
| Cal (18) | 86 | 68 | 40 | Winner | Excluded: won low net | |
| Dee (18) | 88 | 70 | 40 | Second on 70 | Winner | |
| Eve (9) | 80 | 71 | 35 |
- With the switch off (the club default), Ana wins all three categories with 72, 67 and 41, and neither Cal nor Dee appears on a winner card.
- Dee and Cal both scored 40 Stableford points. There is no tie on the Stableford card because Cal was a clear winner of low net and was removed before the card was built.
- Had Cal been tied for low net rather than a clear winner, he would have stayed in the Stableford pool and the Stableford card would show Cal and Dee tied on 40, unresolved.
Common variants
- Split the pooled prizes
- Tied players share the prizes for the positions they occupy. Recorded as a policy on Events; the division itself is done by the organizer.
- Full prize to each
- Every tied player receives the whole prize. Recorded as a policy on Events.
- Playoff or chip-off
- The tie is settled on the course. Parful records the committee's decision rather than tracking the chip-off.
- Prize by lot
- Drawing the winner from a hat. Parful never resolves a tie by lot; the card shows the tie.