League guide

Running a league, week after week.

A league is a season of weekly matchups — individual or teams — with standings, handicaps, subs, playoffs and a feed. Set it up once and it mostly runs itself. Here's everything it can do, and how to set it up.

What a league is, and what you can create

A league is a season of weekly play — usually the same night each week for two or three months. Every week each player or team is matched against an opponent, scores come in from phones, and the standings, handicaps and next week's matchups take care of themselves.

Individual leagues match one golfer against another. Team leagues match teams (two to twelve players each); every player on a team gets their own matchup against a player on the other team.
9 holes or 18 per week. A 9-hole league alternates between the front and back nine week to week, with the course's pars and hole handicaps for that nine.
One home course all season, or a different course week to week — for a league that moves around, each week's course is set on the schedule and its scorecard rebuilt from it.
Twelve scoring systems. Individual: Stroke Play, Stableford, Round Ranking (points by finishing position each week), Custom Points, and Match Play scored per hole or one point per round. Teams: Team Head-to-Head, Team Aggregate and Team Scramble, each scored per hole or one point per round.
Four handicap methods, worked out from the scores players post each week — or bring your own handicaps and use them as they are.
Standard or Flex scheduling: opponents play together and share one card, or each side plays any day that week and posts its own round.
Byes or a ghost opponent for a leftover player, a season of any length up to 60 weeks, playoffs at the end, skins, putting stats, subs, announcements and a feed.

How to create a league

From the sidebar, click League. Setup is seven steps; every step saves as you go, and Skip for now on any of them leaves it for later.

1League info — the name; whether the league plays the same course all season or a different course week to week; the home (or usual) course, picked from the list so its scorecard comes with it; city and state; a description; and three switches — Public (listed in Find a league), Accepting members, and Show contact info on the roster.
2Format & scoring — Teams or Individual; players per team; 9 or 18 holes; the scoring system; the point values it uses (per hole won, most holes, front and back nine net-low, round net-low, attendance, and the team bonuses for a team league); Auto or Manual matchups; and tee times or a shotgun start. Everything on this step locks when you finish setup, so players always know the rules they signed up for.
3Rules & handicap — max strokes per hole; the score deadline; what happens to a no-show; bye or ghost for an odd player out; who can enter scores; how many rounds count toward standings; skins; putting; and the handicap method and its settings. The rules, standings, skins and handicap choices lock with the format; score entry, the deadline and putting stay editable.
4Scorecard — par and hole handicap for all 18 holes, with the course rating and slope. Filled in already if you picked a course; check it and continue. Weeks are built from this card.
5Season & schedule — the year, how many weeks, the first week's date, and whether the league has playoffs. Leave Create the weekly schedule ticked and every week goes on the calendar a week apart. Dates, weeks and playoffs stay editable later.
6Players — the invite link and join code to share, and a form to add teams or players yourself. You can come back to this any time.
7Review & finish — everything you set, what's still open (with a Go back link for each), and the lock warning right above the Finish buttons. Finish opens the league admin page or the league's home.

Players, teams and roles

Players join with an account, so they can see their matchups, enter scores and use the feed from their own phone. You can add people without an account too.

Players create a player account — no admin dashboard, just their league's home feed — and can type the league code as they sign up to join in the same step (an invite link fills it in for them). Players who already have an account enter the code under Find a league, where public leagues are also listed.
Players you add yourself are in the league right away — email optional. Each one can later claim their spot, keeping its team, handicap and scores: sign up with the email you entered, open their personal claim link (on the Members page, copy it and text it, or add their email and it's sent to them), or join with the code and pick their name — you approve that one on the Members page. If someone joined as a new player first, link their account to their spot there too.
Add teams or players by hand from the Players step or the league admin page. Editing a player's name or handicap later is fine; moving a player to another team keeps their finished weeks with the old team.
Every team also has a printed-card scoring code — a QR code and 4-digit PIN — so a player without an account can still enter scores from the printed scorecard.
Roles: Player, Admin and Commissioner. Admins and Commissioners run the league from the league admin page — they don't need an organization account of their own.
Substitutes: mark someone as a sub and they're kept out of the regular matchups but available to fill in. A player who can't make a week requests a sub from their matchup; subs on the roster say whether they're available; the requester accepts one. An admin can also place a sub directly.
A member who leaves is withdrawn rather than deleted: their played weeks stay in the standings and they drop out of future pairings.

The schedule and each week's matchups

The season is a list of weeks. Each week has a date, a nine (or all 18), and its matchups.

Generate the whole schedule from the first week's date — a week apart, front and back nine alternating for a 9-hole league. Add a single week, add the next week, cancel a week (with a reason players see), or mark a week as a Major, where Stableford and Round Ranking points count double.
A league that plays a different course each week has a Set course link on every week: pick the course (and front or back nine) and the week's scorecard — par, yardage, hole handicaps, rating and slope — is rebuilt from it. Weeks say Course not set until you do, and a week with scores already in keeps them and just takes the new pars.
Auto matchups rotate a round-robin so everyone meets everyone; Manual lets you set every pairing yourself. Either way, matchups are made from the active roster (subs and withdrawn players excluded) and each side's handicap is locked at that moment.
Tee times: give the first time and the gap between groups and every matchup gets a time. Shotgun: every matchup gets a starting hole.
Odd player out: a Bye sits out for the week, or a Ghost plays a set score — net par, or the league's average net for that hole, with an optional offset in strokes for the round (3 means the ghost shoots three over, one extra on each of the three hardest holes). In a team league you choose whether the ghost's points count for the short-handed team.
Standard scheduling: the two sides play together, and either can enter both scores from one shared card with one PIN. Scores open at the matchup's tee time.
Flex scheduling: a week is open for seven days from its date. Each side plays the week's course any day in it, enters its own scores, and posts the round — teammates can post on different days. A posted round is final: only a league admin can change it. Nobody sees a matchup's scores or result until both sides have posted, only who has posted. When the week closes, a side that never posted is a no-show: its opponent is scored against the ghost instead, and it gets nothing. If neither side posted, nothing counts. Skins are worked out when the week closes. Players are told when their opponent posts, and reminded two days before the week closes.
Every week has printable scorecards: both players, the strokes each receives shown as dots on the holes, Tot and Net columns, and the scoring QR code and PIN.

Scoring a week and closing it

Players enter scores hole by hole from their phone; the week finalizes itself once every matchup is in.

Enter my scores on the league home opens the current week's card. Each hole saves as it's entered, with a confirmation on the button. Max strokes per hole caps a blow-up hole if you set one.
Putting can be tracked by round (one total per side) or by hole (putts entered next to every score) and shows on the week's recap.
Who can enter scores is a setting: players and admins, or admins only.
Players can change their scores until the week closes. After that they request a correction from the card, and an admin makes the change.
The score deadline is a number of days after the week's date. A matchup with one side never having played is settled by the no-show rule. Opponent plays the ghost (the default): the side that played is scored against the league's ghost, and the side that didn't has no week at all — no points, no result, and nothing toward their rounds. The older rules are still there: no points to either side, or all points to the side that played.
A week finalizes when every matchup is complete — or when you mark it complete by hand — and the standings and handicaps update. With auto-advance on, the league moves to the next week on its own: the day after the week's date, or on a set weekday and time in your time zone, with next week's matchups made a set number of days early.
The Automation page runs all of this. The league catches up whenever anyone opens it; Run automation now does it on demand; and a scheduled job (Vercel Cron is set up to run daily) keeps the timing exact even when nobody's looking.

Standings, points and handicaps

The Board shows the season standings; a week's page shows that week's results and recap. Both are computed from the scores, so a corrected score updates everything.

Match play per hole: 2 points (or your value) for each hole won, split on a halved hole, plus optional bonuses for most holes won and the round's net-low (4 by default), and for the front and back nine on 18-hole weeks. One point per round awards one point to whoever wins more holes, with the same net-low bonus on top unless you set it to zero. A forfeit is worth what the match was played for. Team systems add a team net-low bonus (6 by default), and Team Aggregate combines each team's players — better ball or cumulative — before comparing.
Team Scramble: each team plays one ball and turns in one score per hole, and every week is team vs team, scored like match play. Strokes come from the difference of the two team handicaps, which follow the USGA's scramble allowances — 35% of the lower handicap plus 15% of the higher for a twosome, 30/20/10 for three, 25/20/15/10 for four. Standings are by team.
Stroke Play ranks by average net per week played, so missing a week never helps, and a card with holes missing when the week closes isn't counted as a round. Stableford ranks by points. Round Ranking awards points by finishing place each week on an automatic, interval or custom scale — players tied on net split the points for the places they share.
Handicap strokes: Stroke Play, Stableford and Round Ranking give every player their full handicap, since they're compared against the whole league. Match play and the team head-to-head systems give strokes on the difference between the two players, on the hardest holes first; Team Aggregate gives each player the difference from the lowest handicap among everyone in the pairing. A player whose opponent doesn't turn up in Stroke Play or Stableford keeps their own round.
Rounds to count: all weeks, keep the best N, or drop the worst N of each player's (or team's) own weeks — so one bad night doesn't decide the season. Win-loss records still count every week.
Handicaps come from posted scores, four ways. Average over par (recommended): strokes over par, averaged over recent rounds — simple, and no course rating needed. Average score: average gross score minus par, which in practice matches average over par. Differential: each round adjusted for the course's rating and slope, then averaged — fairer across courses of different difficulty, but every week needs a rating and slope. World Handicap System: the official method, best 8 of the last 20 differentials, turned into strokes for each week's course — closest to a real handicap index, and also needs rating and slope. You set how many rounds are required before a handicap counts, how many recent rounds are considered, a temporary handicap used only when one can't be calculated (say, Differential or WHS with no course rating), maximums, a percentage factor, a cap on each hole's score for the calculation, whether plus handicaps are allowed, and whether front- and back-nine handicaps are kept together or apart.
A player's first week: if you entered a handicap for them, week 1 is played off it, and it counts as one of their rounds — after their first round their handicap works out as if they had two rounds in the books. With no handicap entered, their match waits: once they finish their first round they get a handicap from it, and the points are awarded.
Each week's handicap is locked when the matchups are made, so a match is played off the numbers on the card. The Handicaps page recalculates on demand and shows every player's number with the rounds and method behind it.
Skins: net, gross or both, per week, with ties carrying over if you like, and optionally with net strokes worth half in the skins. Everyone with a complete card is in for the season, or players tap I'm in each week.

Playoffs

Turn playoffs on under Season and they start on their own when the regular season ends; you can also start one by hand any time.

Choose how many players or teams qualify (2 to 16), whether each round is played over one week or two, the tiebreaker for a halved match — higher seed, best net, or your pick — and whether to re-seed each round.
Seeds come from the regular-season standings: points, then wins. Preview the seeds before you start.
Playoff weeks never count toward the season standings, but handicaps keep updating from them. Advance the bracket as each round finishes; the league's Playoffs page shows the bracket to everyone.

Announcements, the feed and notifications

A league is a community as much as a competition, so players get a home page, not just a scorecard.

The league home shows each player their next match — opponent, time or hole, and the strokes — with Enter my scores, the latest announcement and the feed.
Announcements are yours alone to post and appear at the top of the home page. The feed is for everyone: posts with up to four photos, likes and comments. Each week's recap — results, standings movement and skins — is posted automatically.
Players get notifications for their matchup, a sub request that needs an answer, missed scores and week results; a dot on their Profile tab shows something's waiting. When email is set up, the same go out by email.
Matchups, Board, Schedule, Roster and Playoffs are one tap away for every member; anyone not on the roster can only ask to join.

Ending a season and starting the next

When the last week is done, archive the season. The standings are frozen into the league's history and the next season starts counting fresh.

Seasons shows every archived season with its final team and player standings. Archive by hand from there, or turn on Start the next season on its own under Automation.
Format, scoring and handicap rules lock when setup finishes so the season is played by one set of rules. Everything else — the roster, the schedule, dates, the course, the deadline, who enters scores, putting, playoffs and automation — can be changed any time from League settings.
The league admin page is the hub: the roster with every team's PIN, the schedule with each week's Matchups and Scorecards, and links to Members, Settings, Scoring, Course, Seasons, Automation, Handicaps, Playoffs and Announcements.

Running a tournament →

One-day and multi-round tournaments.

Game modes, fully explained →

How each tournament format is scored.

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