Golf terms, explained

The words that come up when a group is playing for something — and what each one means when it is your turn to work out the money.

Looking for how a game is played rather than what a word means? That is the game guides.

Strokes and handicaps

Handicap index: The number that travels with you, kept by your golf association. It is not how many shots you get — it is the input. Halved stores it per golfer and turns it into a course handicap the moment you pick a tee.
Course handicap: How many strokes you get at this course from these tees: index × slope ÷ 113, plus course rating minus par, rounded. The same golfer is a 14 from one tee and a 17 from another, which is the whole point of rating a course.
Playing handicap: The course handicap after the game's allowance, and after an adjustment when the group is playing tees of different par. It is the number your strokes are actually dealt from.
Allowance: The percentage of handicap a game gives you — 90% of your playing handicap, say, rather than all of it. Lower allowances are common in four-ball because the best ball of two already flatters a side.
Stroke index: The 1 to 18 ranking printed on the card that says which holes are hardest, and therefore where strokes fall. A 12 handicap strokes on the holes indexed 1 through 12. Above 18 you stroke everywhere and twice on the hardest: an effective 23 is one shot a hole, and a second on indexes 1 to 5.
Net: Your score after handicap strokes come off. A 6 on a hole where you get a stroke is a net 5.
Gross: Your score before any strokes come off — what you actually wrote down.
Strokes off the low man: Instead of everybody playing their own net, the lowest handicap in the group plays to scratch and everyone else gets the difference. A 6, a 12 and a 20 become 0, 6 and 14. Common in match play, where what matters is the gap between you rather than each golfer's number.
Net double bogey: A cap on the damage: no hole counts worse than par + 2 + the strokes you get there. A triple on a hole where you stroke still scores as a double. Halved applies it at full net, where it is a handicap rule, and never in gross, where the board should show the card you really played.

Match play

Halved: A hole neither side wins. Nobody is up, nobody is down, and the match moves on — which is also where this app got its name.
All square: The match is level. Written AS.
Up and down: How a match is scored: holes won, not shots. Two up means you have won two more holes than your opponent, whatever you shot.
Dormie: You are as many holes up as there are left to play. You cannot lose — the worst that happens is a halved match.
Closeout: The match ends early, because the lead is bigger than the holes remaining. Written as 3&2: three up with two to play. Halved counts those remaining holes along the group's own play order, so a shotgun start closes out correctly.
Press: A second bet opened mid-round by the side that is losing, running from the next hole to the end of the nine. The original bet carries on alongside it.
Auto press: The same thing without anyone having to ask: a press opens automatically whenever a side goes two down, and again at four, six and eight. Standard in a Nassau.

Bets and scoring

Skin: The prize for one hole, won outright. Tie it and nobody takes it. See Skins.
Carryover: A tied hole adds its skin to the next one, so a halved 5th makes the 6th worth double. Pots grow quietly and then somebody takes four holes' worth with one putt.
Junk: Side payments for things a scorecard cannot see — a sandy, a barky, a one-putt. Someone has to call them, so Halved has the scorer tap them in on the hole.
Quota: A target of points rather than a score to beat: 36 minus your course handicap. Beat your quota and you are plus; miss it and you are minus, and the match is the difference between the two.
Stableford points: Points per hole against par — par is 2, a birdie 3, a bogey 1, and a blow-up is simply 0, which is why the format forgives a wrecked hole. The table is adjustable; see Stableford.
Pot: Everyone's stake together. In a pool game the pot is the whole prize and the only question is how it splits.

How a round is played

Honors: The right to tee off first, earned by winning the previous hole outright. It passes only when somebody beats you — tie the hole and whoever had it keeps it. Halved turns that into a game of its own, where every hole you hold the honor scores a point: see Honors.
Shotgun start: Every group tees off at the same time from a different hole, so an event finishes together. It means the first hole a group plays may be the 7th, and anything counting “holes played” has to follow that order rather than the numbers on the card.
Four-ball: Two against two, each playing their own ball, the better score of each pair counting. Also called best ball. See Sixes, which rotates the pairs every six holes.
Alternate shot: Two golfers, one ball, taking turns — including off the tee, where they alternate by hole. Also called foursomes.
Scramble: Everyone tees off, the team picks the best ball, and everyone plays from there. Repeat until it is in.
Shamble: A scramble off the tee and your own ball after that, so the team gets one good drive and then four real scores.
Borrowed fourth: A threesome in a game built for four borrows a score from the group ahead, so the format still works. Halved marks it, and never pays a prize to one.
Withdrawal: A golfer who cannot finish — an injury, a flight to catch. The holes already played stand and the money settles around them, rather than the round being void.
Settle up: The end of it: every game netted into one figure per golfer, and who hands what to whom.

Halved does this arithmetic for you

Strokes, presses, carries and who owes whom — worked out hole by hole while you play, so nobody is doing it on the back of a scorecard in the car park.

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