SCORING FAQs

Initial handicap calculation scorecards must be processed by Access Golf, which you can either submit upon purchase of your membership, or afterwards following the process on your welcome email.

If competing in a competition or club day, submit your card at the club where you have played and they will load your score into GOLF Link.

For Conforming Social Scorecards, simply record your score details and upload a copy of your scorecard to our scorecard submission page. Note, social scores require pre-round nomination of your intention to lodge a score. This can be done here.

• Your name and GOLF Link number
• Date played
• Name of golf course
• Tees played (colour)
• Score (i.e. total amount of strokes)
• Yours and your markers signature. Note, your marker must be someone involved in Australian golf, so a club pro, a club member, or a golfer with an official Australian handicap. 

• Your name and GOLF Link number
• Date played
• Name of golf course
• Tees played (colour)
• Your Daily Handicap
• Score (total strokes and Stableford points)
• Yours and your markers signature

An annotated example CSS card is provided below

A GA Handicap is Golf Australia’s assessment of the relative golfing ability of a player on a course with a neutral Scratch Rating and Slope Rating. It is expressed as a number taken to one decimal place and is determined in accordance with the GA Handicap System.  The GA Handicap is not designed for use in handicap competition play; rather it is one of the factors used in the calculation of the Daily Handicap.

A Daily Handicap is the number of strokes a player receives for play at the course being played. The Daily Handicap is expressed as a whole number. The Daily Handicap is the handicap to be used in handicap competition play including CSS scoring.

The formula for calculating your Daily Handicap is (GA Handicap x (Slope Rating ÷ 113) + (Scratch Rating minus Par)) x 0.93. For example, a player with a GA Handicap of 15.2 playing a course with a slope rating of 124, scratch rating of 72 and par 70, has a Daily Handicap of 17 (rounded from 17.4).

We recommend using the GA Handicap app to find your Daily Handicap. All you need to do is look up the course and select which tees you are playing from to automatically calculate your Daily Handicap. Very easy!

Scratch Rating

The Scratch Rating indicates the normal playing difficulty of a set of tees for a scratch golfer (a player with a handicap of zero). This number is based on a range of features of the course, including measured meterage, obstacles, and characteristics that impact playing length, such as elevation.  

Slope Rating

The Slope Rating indicates how difficult a particular golf course is for a bogey player compared to a scratch player. A bogey player is a person with a handicap of 20 for males and 24 for females. The higher the Slope Rating, the higher the relative difficulty for the bogey player. 

This rating is used to determine how many handicap strokes a player will receive from a specific set of tees. Most scorecards will have the course’s slope rating printed on them. 

Stableford involves scoring points based on results at each hole. Using the index for each hole, players are able to make a mental allocation of their full handicap for each of the 18 holes. 

For example, a player on a Daily Handicap of 18 will add one shot to the par value of each hole to determine their own par for the hole. Thus a hole rated as a par 4 becomes a par 5 for the player. A player on a Daily Handicap of 9 will only add one shot to the holes indexed 1-9 as denoted on the scorecard (i.e. the 9 hardest holes), with zero shots allocated for the other 9 holes.

The points scoring method is then calculated by allocating:

• 1 point for a net bogey
• 2 points for a net par
• 3 points for a net birdie
• 4 points for a net eagle, and so on

For example, a player receiving a stroke on a par 4 hole scores 4 giving them a net 3; for this the player receives 3 points. A player at a par 3 hole scores a 4 but does not receive a stroke; for this the player would receive 1 point. 

Players who exceed their own par by two strokes score no points for the hole and, since they cannot improve on that result, they should pick up their ball. At the end of the round all points scored are added up and the player having the highest number of points is the winner. 

When marking the score card, the number of strokes taken must always be shown for holes where points are scored. Thus, the card records both strokes and points. 

The Stableford format is popular as it allows an individual golfer to play the course on his/her own merits but, in the event of a bad hole, allows the golfer to pick up the ball and move onto the next hole.

Players are not severely penalised for having a 'blow-up' hole like they are in stroke play, i.e. where they score a net double bogey or worse. For example, a quintuple bogey (5 over), which may be considered to ruin a player's stroke play round, is simply recorded as zero under a Stableford format allowing the golfer to move on and still have a chance of recording a good score.