Handicaps and scoring
Parful runs this, with a caveatNine-hole rounds
Also called Nine hole golf, 9 hole competition, Twilight round.
A nine-hole round takes half the strokes: a Playing Handicap™ of 12 receives one stroke on the six lowest stroke indexes of that nine, wrapping the same way an eighteen-hole allocation does. Parful scores nine holes completely, and does not yet post them for handicap.
- Strokes
- Allocated across the nine holes actually played
- A 12 handicap over nine
- One stroke on the six lowest stroke indexes
- A 24 handicap over nine
- One everywhere, plus a second on the three lowest
- Stableford
- 18 points is playing to handicap over nine
- Countback
- Front nine variant, then last 6, last 3, last hole
- Handicap posting
- Not supported
How strokes fall over nine holes
The allocation rule is the same as over eighteen: strokes are handed out one at a time from stroke index 1 upward, and once every hole has one the allocation wraps and starts again. The only difference is that there are nine holes to go round rather than eighteen, so it wraps twice as fast.
A Playing Handicap™ of 12 over nine holes gives one stroke on every hole, then a second on the three lowest stroke indexes of that nine. A handicap of 6 gives one stroke on the six lowest. Parful reads the stroke index of the nine actually being played, so a back-nine round allocates on the back nine's own indexes.
Running a nine-hole competition
Everything else works the way it does over eighteen. Stableford scores against net par hole by hole and eighteen points is playing to your handicap. Stroke play ranks on net total. A match is decided when the lead exceeds the holes remaining, which happens sooner.
Ties are settled by countback, and for a nine-hole competition the front-nine variant is the one to use: it compares the front nine first and then the last six, last three and last hole of the round played, rather than looking for a back nine that does not exist.
What happens for handicap, honestly
The World Handicap System™ does support nine-hole rounds. A nine-hole round produces a nine-hole Score Differential™, and two of them are combined into one eighteen-hole differential that enters your record.
Parful does not do this. Its differential calculation assumes eighteen holes and there is no guard that stops a nine-hole gross being fed into it, so nine-hole rounds are simply not posted for handicap. A club running a nine-hole league on Parful gets full scoring, prizes and standings, and its members' handicaps are unaffected by those rounds. This is a real gap rather than a design choice and it is recorded as such.
How Parful runs it
An outing is set to nine or eighteen holes when it is created. On a nine-hole outing the scorecard shows nine holes, strokes are allocated across them, gross and net totals cover the nine, and Stableford points, skins and every side game that does not require eighteen holes resolve normally.
A few games do require a full round and say so on their own pages: the counting games that name specific holes across both nines, and 30/40 Balls, which banks a fixed number of scores over eighteen.
Worked example
A worked example: a 12 handicap over the back nine
The back nine of the sample card, with its own stroke indexes. Ben plays off a Playing Handicap™ of 12 for the nine.
| Hole | Par | Stroke index | Strokes | Gross | Net | Stableford |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 4 | 8 | 1 | 6 | 5 | 1 |
| 11 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 7 | 5 | 2 |
| 12 | 3 | 18 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| 13 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 2 |
| 14 | 4 | 12 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 2 |
| 15 | 3 | 16 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 1 |
| 16 | 5 | 6 | 1 | 6 | 5 | 2 |
| 17 | 4 | 10 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| 18 | 4 | 14 | 1 | 7 | 6 | 0 |
- Fifteen points is three short of the eighteen that represents playing to handicap over nine holes.
- The double stroke falls on holes 11, 13 and 16, the three lowest stroke indexes on this nine.
Common variants
- Combining two nines for handicap
- The World Handicap System™ pairs two nine-hole differentials into one eighteen-hole differential. Parful does not do this yet, so its nine-hole rounds do not reach a handicap record.
- Nine-hole leagues
- A weekly nine-hole league is a season standings problem rather than a handicap one, and Parful runs those in full: points, counting rounds and tiebreaks all work over nine-hole outings.
- Twelve or fifteen hole rounds
- Some clubs run short rounds of other lengths. Parful supports nine and eighteen only.