2008 #5 Adjust Your Score

The Scene:
You are playing with three other people. The feature of the day is best individual gross and net score. After play, you and Nancy post your foursome’s scores in the breezeway for the competition. Then she heads for the handicap computer. You say, “Don’t forget to adjust your score. You had a couple of 9’s and your maximum is 8.” She waved you off and said, “Oh, you don’t have to do that. The computer does it for you.”

What would you do?
A. Shrug and forget it?
B. Insist that she adjust her score?

B is correct.
You are required to adjust your score. On any hole where your score exceeds your maximum, you should reduce it to your maximum. The computer doesn’t do that for you unless you are posting a score, hole by hole.

Just think about it. Let’s say your handicap is 36. Because your handicap is in the 30’s, the maximum score you are allowed to take on any hole would be 9.

If you scored 108, you could have had a double bogey on every hole. And no adjustment would be needed.

But you could have pared the Par 3’s,and had a 14 on one of the Par 4’s. Because your maximum is 9, that would require an adjustment of 5 strokes!

Both scenarios add up to a score of 108. But one requires a big adjustment and the other requires none. How could the computer know that? It couldn’t. The computer knows that your maximum is 9 but it doesn’t know what you scored on each hole.

So, it is up to you. Adjust that 14 to a 9, giving you a total postable score of 103, not 108.

But why is this so important? It is important because if you fail to adjust your scores, the computer can’t calculate an accurate handicap for you.

REMEMBER: Every time you post a score in the handicap computer, if you have a score on any hole that is above your maximum, adjust it.