Recording a round

Two ways in, for two different situations.

Live

Start a round and you're asked three things: where, who, and what you're playing for. Those answers are law for the rest of the day. They're stored with the round, so if somebody's score turns out to be wrong next week the money can be recalculated properly instead of guessed at.

Then it's one hole at a time, with the running money along the bottom. You always know where you stand, which is the entire reason anybody looks at their phone on a golf course.

Nothing is filed until you finish, and nothing is lost either. The round is written down as you go, so if your battery dies on the 14th, or iOS closes the app while it's in your pocket, it's waiting on the clubhouse when you come back — on the hole you were on, worth what it was worth. Leaving on purpose does end it, and you'll be asked first.

Setups you play every week

Most groups play the same thing most weeks. Save a setup once — the games, the stakes, the pressing rule, who's on whose side — and starting next Thursday's round is one tap instead of four screens of decisions you already made.

Net or gross

The stakes step says which you're playing and why it matters. Net takes everyone's handicap strokes off first, hole by hole, on the holes the card's stroke index gives them, so a 14 and a 4 can play each other straight. Gross is what you shot. Scores are always entered gross; net changes who wins the games, not what went on the card. The question mark beside the row says the rest.

Order of play

Wolf, Defender, Sixes and Wingman turn on who goes first — the Wolf on 1, who defends 1, who partners whom in the first six. The stakes step carries an Order of play card for those games: numbered seats, arrows to move anyone, and Flip for it to shuffle. The agreement line above it names the result, so it's reviewed with the money.

Nine holes

Front or back, chosen on the same screen as the course. A back nine keeps the stroke indexes the card prints, so the 12th is still index 5. Nassau settles as one match instead of front, back and overall, because paying out the same nine twice isn't a Nassau.

Where you stand, while you play

Under the projection, a strip gives every player's chance of finishing top and what the chaser needs — "Jack is $280 behind Mike with 11 to play." The chances come from playing the remaining holes out many times with plausible scores and settling every game the round carries through the same arithmetic that will settle the real one. An estimate, labelled as one; the money above it is never touched by it.

Defender gets a board of its own: the hill-holder under a castle, the two attackers either side, and a hole-by-hole ledger of held, breached and halved, with a ring on the hole being played.

The card, afterwards

The round page says what each player shot for the holes played — gross, net against par, and over or under their number — and what the round did to their plays-to. The card itself totals OUT, IN and TOT for an eighteen, TOT for a nine.

Sharing the round

Every share carries the round as a strip of squares — blue for eagle or better, green for birdie, white for par, yellow for bogey, orange for double, red for worse — with a gap between the nines and the number under it: "Brad 87 · +16 · net 74 · won $12". Nobody texts "shot 87"; everybody texts the strip, and it starts the "what happened on 5?" conversation on its own. It's on the recap's result card and in its message, and a filed round has its own Share pill.

Rounds you've already played

Photograph the scorecard. Rivalry reads the handwriting into scores and shows you its work before anything is filed.

This is how a group that's been playing for fifteen years gets fifteen years in, instead of starting from zero on the day they download an app. Bring the shoebox of cards. It counts.

Everyone else can watch it

The moment you start scoring, the round is visible to the group — the three playing with you, and whoever couldn't make it. One phone keeps the card; everybody else gets to watch the money move.

The junk, tapped as it happens

Some games can't be read off a scorecard. Playing Dots, you tap the greenie to the man who hit it, right on the scoring screen. Playing Hammer, you tap the throw and the hole's price climbs where everyone can see it. Snake changes hands the same way. One tap each, undoable, and the money sheet mid-round already knows.

When it lands

A filed round shows up in the group's story with what it did to the standings and the tab. Anyone can tip their cap to it — one tap, undoable, and that's the whole gesture. If there's more to say, comments sit on the round itself and stay there for years, which the group chat does not.

Pictures, and the story

A round can carry the group's own photos — added by anyone, kept with the round, free and never counted against anybody. And any round can be written up: ask, and the beat reporter files a recap from the day's actual numbers — who took the money, what it did to the season, which streak just ended. Written once, kept forever, the same words for everyone in the group.

If it was on a trip

It attaches itself, and the money settles on the trip's tab rather than the group's. Worth knowing before you go looking for it on the group ledger.

Getting it wrong

Any round can be fixed afterwards, and fixing a score recalculates the money rather than leaving the old figure sitting there. The change is recorded, so there's no argument later about who edited what.