Competition formats
Parful runs thisClub Championship
Also called Club champion, Championship stroke play, Gross and net championship.
A Club Championship is a stroke play competition that decides the club's best player for the year: usually 36 holes over two rounds, with a gross division played off scratch for the champion and a net division at full handicap for the rest of the field, split into flights so that players compete against similar handicaps.
- Played as
- Individual stroke play, own ball, hole out everywhere
- Length
- Usually 36 holes over two rounds; 18 or 54 also run
- Divisions
- Gross (scratch) for the champion, net at full handicap
- Flights
- Up to six, seeded by handicap into near-equal groups
- Ties
- Countback on the final round, or a playoff for the title
- Runs on
- Club competitions, as a template
How a Club Championship works
The championship is stroke play: every hole counted, every hole holed out, lowest total wins. What makes it a championship rather than a medal is that the club crowns a champion on gross score, with no handicap at all, and runs a net competition at the same time from the same cards so that the 18 handicap has something to play for. The gross winner is the club champion. The net winner is the net champion, and each flight has its own winner too.
Most clubs play 36 holes over two rounds, on one weekend or two consecutive ones, and add the two rounds together. Some play a single 18 for a smaller field and a few play 54 or 72 over a season's worth of weekends. Every round counts; there is no dropping a bad day.
Gross, net and flights
The gross division ranks on the raw total. The net division subtracts each player's handicap strokes for each round: at 100% of Course Handicap™, a 14 handicap over two rounds takes 28 strokes off the 36-hole total. The recommended allowance for the net division is full handicap, because the championship is the one day of the year when the club wants the net board to reflect the handicap exactly.
Flights split the field by handicap so that a 3 handicap and a 24 handicap are not on the same net board. The usual pattern is three flights of roughly equal size, seeded from the lowest handicap up, with a winner and a runner-up in each. A player can appear on the gross board, the net board and their flight board at once; whether one player may take two prizes is a decision in the club's conditions.
Settling a tie
A tie for the title is the one place most clubs insist on a playoff: sudden death from the first tee, or a set number of holes, until someone wins outright. Ties for the net division and the flight prizes are settled on the cards by countback over the final round: the back nine, then the last six holes, the last three and the eighteenth, comparing gross strokes over each stretch. A tie that survives the eighteenth shares the position.
How Parful runs it
Club Championship is a template in club competitions. It is the Stroke Play template with the championship defaults already set: gross and net divisions both on, flights on, full handicap frozen at the start, countback as the tiebreaker and room for up to 80 players. The admin picks the dates and, if the championship is 36 holes, sets it to two rounds across two outings; the same cards feed the gross board, the net board and each flight board.
Each round is frozen when it opens: the course, the tees, the handicap allocation and the tiebreak are snapshotted, so a handicap change between rounds does not move the strokes and the rules cannot change after the cards are in. Flights are seeded by handicap into one to six near-equal groups, or set by hand. When the last card lands the podiums are written to the competition record and the champion goes onto the season honors board.
Worked example
A worked example: six players, 36 holes, three flights
A par 72 course, two rounds, net division at full Course Handicap™. Flight A is handicaps 0 to 9, Flight B 10 to 19, Flight C 20 and above. Net total is gross total minus two times the Course Handicap.
| Player | Course Handicap | Round 1 | Round 2 | Gross total | Strokes (2 rounds) | Net total | Flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ana | 3 | 74 | 76 | 150 | 6 | 144 | A |
| Ben | 6 | 77 | 75 | 152 | 12 | 140 | A |
| Cal | 11 | 81 | 84 | 165 | 22 | 143 | B |
| Dee | 14 | 85 | 82 | 167 | 28 | 139 | B |
| Eli | 19 | 92 | 90 | 182 | 38 | 144 | B |
| Fay | 24 | 96 | 99 | 195 | 48 | 147 | C |
- Ana is second on the net board behind Dee despite winning the championship by two shots gross. A 3 handicap gives away 22 strokes to a 14 over 36 holes.
- Dee shot 85 then 82 and won the net division by one from Ben. Had she been re-handicapped to 13 after round one it would not have mattered: the strokes for both rounds were frozen at the start.
Common variants
- Match play championship
- A stroke play qualifier followed by a knockout bracket among the leading players, with the final over 36 holes. Parful runs it as a qualifier bracket: a stroke play round seeds a match play bracket.
- Championship with a cut
- A 54-hole championship where only the leading players after 36 holes play the final round. Parful scores every round; the cut is a decision the committee records on the competition.
- Gross only
- A scratch championship with no net division, run by clubs with a separate net championship on another date. Parful runs it by setting the competition scope to gross.