Dave has started playing the forward tees. He is an 18, he enjoys the game more from there, and he hits more greens. Mike, a 10 who still plays the back tees, has a view about this, and he shares it on the first tee: Dave is getting free strokes. Dave says the handicap system sorts it out. Dave is closer to right, and the arithmetic is short.
What the handicap system already does
Every set of tees has a course rating, roughly what a scratch golfer would shoot from them, and a slope rating, how much harder they play for a bogey golfer than for a scratch one. A player’s course handicap is worked out for the tees they actually play: index × slope ÷ 113, plus the course rating minus par. The USGA says this is what makes an index portable across courses and tees of different difficulty.
So a player who moves up doesn’t keep the strokes they had from the back. Their course handicap is recalculated for an easier set of tees, and it usually goes down. The index-versus-course-handicap guide runs the formula for one player on two sets of tees. Here, the question is two players on two sets of tees.
Mike from the back, Dave from the front
Here are two invented sets of tees on the same course, both par 72. These examples use full handicaps, a 100% allowance, so the playing handicap is the course handicap before any adjustment for different pars.
| Tees | Par | Course rating | Slope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Back | 72 | 72.4 | 131 |
| Forward | 72 | 69.1 | 121 |
Mike’s 10.0 from the back: 10 × 131 ÷ 113 is 11.59, plus 0.4, which is 11.99. He gets 12. Dave’s 18.0 from the back would be 20.87 plus 0.4, or 21. From the forward tees it is 18 × 121 ÷ 113, which is 19.27, minus 2.9, or 16.37. He gets 16.
| Player | Tees | Course handicap | Target score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mike, 10.0 | Back | 12 | 84 |
| Dave, 18.0 | Back | 21 | 93 |
| Dave, 18.0 | Forward | 16 | 88 |
The USGA calls course handicap plus par a player’s target score: what they shoot when they play to their handicap. Moving up costs Dave five strokes, because the forward tees rate 3.3 shots easier for a scratch player and carry a lower slope. Played to their handicaps, both players finish on a net 72. Dave isn’t being handed strokes. He is being handed a shorter course and fewer strokes to go with it.
When the two tees have different pars
Forward tees often carry a higher par, playing a long par 4 as a par 5, so the two sets of tees have different pars. The Rules of Handicapping deal with that in Rule 6.2b: in stroke play and match play scored as gross or net, the player on the higher-par tees gets extra strokes equal to the difference in par, added to their playing handicap. When most of a field plays the higher-par tees, the rule also allows taking the difference away from the lower-par players instead.
Say the forward tees play the 4th as a par 5, making them par 73, with the same rating. Dave’s course handicap uses par 73: 19.27 plus (69.1 − 73), which is 15.37, so 15. His tees carry the higher par, so Rule 6.2b adds the one-stroke difference and he plays off 16. Mike’s 12 doesn’t change. The gap between them is four strokes either way, which is the point of the rule.
Fair on average, which is what a handicap is
Ratings describe how a typical scratch golfer and a typical bogey golfer score from a set of tees. Any one player on any one day can beat them or fall short of them, from either tee. A long hitter on a short course may find the forward tees suit them unusually well, and a headwind can make the back tees play longer than their rating. That is true of every handicap game, on any tees.
Which tees a player chooses isn’t a character question. The USGA doesn’t recommend tees by age, gender or driving distance, and leaves recreational players to pick their own. The fair-play question is only whether the strokes were worked out for the tees each player is on. If they were, the game is as fair as handicap golf gets.
Moving up changes the course. The strokes change with it.
What GoLo does with tees today
GoLo loads the par, course rating, slope and stroke index for the tees your group picks, and gives every player their full course handicap for those tees, rounded the way the handicap system rounds it. That covers a group playing one set of tees, which is how GoLo works today.
GoLo doesn’t support players on different tees yet; it is on the list, not built. If Dave plays the forward tees and Mike the back, GoLo can’t give each of them strokes for their own tees in the same round. Until it can, either play one set together or keep the split-tee game on paper using the numbers above. The app keeps the tally for what it scores; the money changes hands outside it.
Settle it on the first tee
“Dave’s on the forward tees, his course handicap is 16 from there, Mike’s is 12 from the back, same par” is one sentence, and it covers everything. Work the numbers out before the round, from the ratings on the card. If someone in the group has no index at all, setting up a fair game without one covers that. Then see one round from setup to settle-up or get GoLo for the next one.
