Circling a hole

After you finish a hole — and before anyone hits a tee shot on the next one — you decide whether to circle your score. A circled hole counts. You end the nine with five circled holes, which means the decision gets tighter as you go: hold out for the closing holes and you may be forced to take whatever they give you.

Please don’t make any other marks on the card — no circling birdies.

Circle 5

Every hole is scored net to par: your gross score, minus any handicap strokes you get on that hole, compared to par. Add up your five circled holes. Lowest total wins.

Wrong 5

Your Wrong 5 is the four holes you didn’t circle, plus your best circled hole — nine holes won’t split into two fives, so one hole has to count for both. On the leaderboards that shared hole is marked with a gold ring.

The Wrong 5 board ranks the gap between your circled five and your Wrong 5. The bigger the gap, the more thoroughly you circled the wrong holes. Biggest gap “wins.”

Tiebreakers

1. Difficulty. Add up the stroke-index ranking of your five holes. The lower the total, the harder the holes you took on — and the harder holes win the tie.
2. Hole by hole. Still tied? Compare net scores one hole at a time, hardest to easiest, starting with the holes every tied player has in that board’s five. A net par beats a net bogey on 17, the hardest hole on the back. Once the shared holes run out, the rest of the nine breaks the tie the same way.