How is a Peoria handicap calculated?

Add the player's scores on the six drawn holes, multiply by three, subtract the course par and take 80%. Round the result.

Who picks the six Peoria holes?

On Parful nobody does. They are drawn automatically when the outing is created, before any score exists, and cannot be changed by the organizer or by anyone else.

How do I know the Peoria draw was fair?

The draw comes from the outing's own identifier, so it can be recomputed at any time and checked against the holes the result was scored on. The published board states the holes and when they were drawn.

Why can we not use Peoria on an older outing?

Because it has no draw, and making one now would mean choosing holes after the scores exist, which is exactly what the draw prevents.

Does one terrible hole ruin Peoria?

No. Each drawn hole counts at most double its par, so a blow-up on a drawn hole cannot buy an outsized handicap.

Handicaps and scoring

Parful runs this

Peoria System

Also called Peoria handicap, Callaway Peoria, Modified Peoria.

Peoria draws six holes before the round, triples what each player scored on them, takes off the course par and applies 80%. That is the player's handicap for the day. The six holes must be fixed before anyone knows them, which is the whole integrity of the system.

Formula: (six drawn holes × 3 − course par) × 80%
Holes drawn: Six, before the round
Hole cap: Each drawn hole counts at most double its par
Integrity: The draw must be settled before any score exists
On Parful: Drawn automatically when the outing is created
Editable: Never, by anyone

How Peoria works

1Six holes are drawn before the round and kept secret until the end.
2For each player, add their scores on those six holes.
3Multiply the total by three, which scales six holes up to eighteen.
4Subtract the par of the course.
5Take 80% of what is left, and round. That is the handicap.

Each drawn hole counts at most double its par, so one blow-up on a drawn hole cannot hand somebody an enormous handicap.

Why the draw has to come first

Peoria is the only one of the guest-day systems that can be rigged, and the way to rig it is obvious: wait until the scores are in, then choose the six holes that suit whoever you want to win. Everything else about the system is arithmetic anyone can check.

So the draw is not a detail, it is the system. A Peoria result where the holes were chosen afterwards is not a Peoria result. This is why Parful does not offer the holes as a setting an organizer can pick or edit.

How Parful draws it

Parful draws the six holes the moment an outing is created, before it has a tee sheet, let alone a score, and stores them on the outing. Nobody can change them afterwards, including the organizer and including Parful support.

The draw is derived from the outing's own identifier rather than from a clock or an unrecorded random number. That gives three things at once: it is settled the instant the outing exists, nobody can predict it beforehand because the identifier is assigned by the database, and anyone can recompute it later from that identifier alone and confirm the holes were never touched. The published result states all of this next to the board, because a system players are asked to trust should be checkable rather than taken on faith.

An outing created before Parful drew Peoria holes cannot run Peoria at all. Drawing them retroactively is precisely what the draw exists to prevent, so the system reports that instead.

Worked example

A worked example: six drawn holes

The draw came out as holes 1, 4, 7, 10, 13 and 16 on a par 72. A player scored 5 on each of them.

Step	Working	Running total
The six drawn holes	5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5	30
Multiply by three	30 × 3	90
Subtract the course par	90 − 72	18
Take 80%	18 × 0.8	14.4
Round		14

The player receives 14 strokes. A gross 95 becomes a net 81.

Had one of those drawn holes been a 12 on a par 4, it would have counted as 8, not 12.
A player who has not finished a drawn hole cannot be given a Peoria handicap at all, so Parful reports them as unranked rather than inventing one.

Common variants

Modified Peoria: Uses a different multiplier or percentage, and some versions draw a fixed spread of par 3s, 4s and 5s. Parful draws six holes at random and scores the standard formula.
Announced holes: Some clubs publish the holes at the start rather than the end. It changes nothing about fairness, since the draw is already fixed, but it does let players play differently on them.