Net double bogey, maximum score and pickups

What net double bogey is

The World Handicap System™ caps what a single hole can contribute to your handicap record. The cap is a net double bogey: the par of the hole, plus two, plus however many handicap strokes you receive there. A 12 handicapper on a par 4 with stroke index 5 receives one stroke, so their cap is 4 plus 2 plus 1, which is 7. On a par 4 where they receive no stroke the cap is 6.

The rule replaced Equitable Stroke Control in 2020. The old system used flat bands keyed to your Course Handicap™; the new one is per hole and takes account of where your strokes actually fall, which is both fairer and easier to apply at the point of scoring.

Why it lets you pick up

Once you can no longer beat the cap, the rest of the hole is irrelevant to your handicap record. You can pick your ball up, record the cap, and walk to the next tee. This is not a concession to slow players: it is the mechanism the handicap system provides so that a blow-up hole neither ruins a card nor holds up a field.

Parful records a pickup as exactly the cap. Not an estimate, not the cap plus one for honesty, not a blank. Where no cap applies, because the competition is playing hole out, a pickup is not allowed and the app says so rather than inventing a number.

The three modes a competition can run

The mode is frozen when scoring opens, so a committee cannot change the cap after the cards are in. Where net double bogey is selected but the course has no par recorded for a hole, Parful refuses to guess and reports that it cannot compute a cap rather than approximating one.

• checkHole out. No cap at all: every player finishes every hole and records what they took. The default for a championship.
• checkMaximum score per hole. A flat number between 1 and 20 that applies to everyone regardless of handicap, common in a casual society day where a simple rule beats a correct one.
• checkNet double bogey. Par plus two plus strokes received, computed per player per hole. The handicap-correct choice.

How Parful enforces it

The scorecard shows the cap for each player on each hole, and the pickup control records it in one tap. A score typed above the applicable cap is rejected with an explicit error rather than quietly clamped, which is deliberate: silently changing a number a scorer typed is how a card stops being trustworthy.

On a one-ball team card the cap uses the team's strokes on the hole rather than any individual's, because the side is playing one ball and there is no individual allocation to read.

Worked example

A worked example: one hole, four players

A par 4 with stroke index 3. Each player has a different Playing Handicap™, so each has a different net double bogey.

• infoSam, a plus player, receives no stroke here and would give one back on stroke index 1 and 2, so their cap is the bare par plus two.
• infoThe cap is per player, not per hole: four players on the same hole have three different numbers.

Common variants

Equitable Stroke Control

The pre-2020 rule, which capped by handicap band rather than by hole. It has its own page and Parful does not run it.

Maximum score formats

Some competitions cap the hole for scoring as well as for handicap, so a triple bogey is the worst anyone can card. Parful supports that as the maximum score mode.

Stableford as a natural cap

Stableford needs no cap rule: a hole you cannot score a point on is worth zero, so picking up costs nothing extra.