Verify the Courses Before Your Golf Trip

Every handicap stroke on the trip comes from the course data: par, the stroke index of each hole, and the rating and slope of the tees you play. Get one of those wrong and a match is decided by a database instead of golf. Do this two weeks out, not on the first tee.

What to check, hole by hole

Par. Eighteen numbers that add up to the card's total. Multi-nine clubs are the usual trap: a database can pair the wrong two nines, or flip the front and back.

Stroke index. The 1 to 18 order that says which holes get strokes. It has to be a full set of eighteen with no repeats, and it has to be the men's column for the tees you play. Some published data ships the women's column by mistake, which hands strokes to the wrong holes for the whole weekend.

Tees, rating, and slope. Pick the tee before the trip and confirm its rating and slope from the club. If you use course handicaps, those two numbers set every player's strokes.

Where to get the truth

The club's own scorecard, a photo of the card from the pro shop, or the club's website. If two sources disagree, the card in the pro shop wins. On our own trip all three courses needed a fix from the club card before the weekend, and the fixes were to the stroke index, the number nobody looks at until strokes are wrong.

Do it in the app, once

Open each course, compare its scorecard to the club card, and fix anything that differs. Then leave it alone: once the first score of a round lands, the rules for that round are locked, so a fix on the trip has to wait for the next round.

The checklist

Par per hole and the total. Stroke index 1 to 18, men's column, no repeats. The tee you will play, with its rating and slope. The hole count, if a course is a nine you play twice. Done for every course, before the draft.

AGI Golf shows every course's scorecard with par, stroke index, and tee ratings, so you can check it against the club card in a minute.

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