Competing from Different Tees

When players are competing from different tees or men and women are competing from the same set of tees with the same par, no additional adjustment needs to be made to the Playing Handicap of the players. However, depending on the format of play, if players are competing from tees with different pars an adjustment may be necessary to create equity.

For stroke play or match play formats (including individual stroke play, four-ball stroke play, singles match play and four-ball match play), the player(s) competing from tees with a higher par must receive additional strokes equal to the difference in par. For example, if par is 71 for some players and 72 for others, those playing from the tees with a par of 72 would receive 1 additional stroke for the round.

Note: If a difference in par in match play formats leads to no player having a Playing Handicap of 0, each player's Playing Handicap must be re-adjusted. The lowest Playing Handicap should be set to 0, with other players receiving the difference. To prevent this situation, the Committee may choose to have all players use the same par for the match.

In most formats of play, the lower score is used to determine a result, i.e., the par is not relevant. For example, on a hole that is a par-4 for men and a par-5 for women, if both players score their respective par, the man wins the hole since a 4 is lower than a 5.

If the format of play is either Stableford (where a player’s point total is compared directly against other players) or a par/bogey format (where the result for the round is compared directly against other players), no adjustment is needed to account for a difference in par (see ).