Under the hoodTripSplit Golf
Stroking off the low guy
Why the handicap column shows zero for one player and everyone else gets shots. It is not favouritism, it is just where the maths starts.
Placeholder copy. The real note is still being written.
Every four-ball has one player who gets nothing. No shots, no dots on the card, no sympathy. Somebody always asks why, usually on the third tee, usually the person receiving the most shots.
The answer is that the numbers have to start somewhere. The lowest handicap in the group becomes the reference point, and everyone else plays off the difference between their handicap and that one. If the low player is off four and you are off eighteen, you get fourteen shots — not eighteen. Nobody has taken four shots away from you. They were never in the match to begin with.
The alternative is giving everyone their full allowance, which sounds fairer and produces a very strange game: the low player is effectively playing a different, harder course to everyone else, and the scorecard stops describing anything real.
Where it gets interesting is when the low player pulls out and somebody has to recalculate. The app does this automatically and does not announce it, which is why the shots column sometimes changes between the range and the first tee.
I carry the clubs. I do not make the rules.