Lift Off: Tee Off Your First Round in Under an Hour

Before anything else, you need to tell the system what kind of golf group you are. Head to your Group settings and give it a name that your players will actually recognize — “Saturday Stableford” is better than “Group A.” Then pick your scoring type: Points-Based Stableford or Score-Based stroke play.

Stableford is the better choice for most weekly groups — especially if your handicap range is wide. A bad hole costs you two points at most, and then you move on. Nobody's round gets blown up by a triple bogey on the first par-5. Stroke play is cleaner when everyone is scratch or near-scratch and you want a pure number at the end.

Next, set your preferred team size: foursomes or fivesomes. Foursomes give every player more active shots per hole and keep the pace brisker. Fivesomes fit more players into each tee time, which is helpful if your course only has limited slots on busy mornings. Choose based on how you actually fill your tee sheet.

Finally, set gender eligibility and add a signup message — that brief note players see when they sign up. Use it for anything that matters that week: “Bring cash for the pot!” or “Wear spikeless shoes — greens are soft.” It gets read. Trust the process.

Navigate to the Courses section and confirm your home course is listed. If it is, great — you can move on in thirty seconds. If it isn't, you'll need to add it: name, location, and then the two nine-hole segments with par and stroke index for each hole.

The stroke index is what the system uses to determine which players receive extra strokes on which holes when handicaps are applied. If you're not sure of the stroke indexes, they're printed on every official scorecard from your pro shop — or ask the starter.

Don't get bogged down making this perfect right now. You can always refine hole data later. As long as the course exists in the system, you can attach it to a round and get going.

Hit Add Round from your rounds page. Select your group, pick a date and tee time, choose the course you just confirmed, and decide whether you're playing 9 or 18 holes. Set the max player count — this caps signups so you don't accidentally oversell a tee sheet.

Toggle Signup Open Immediately if you want players to be able to sign themselves up right away. If you'd rather manually manage the signup list yourself (especially for this first round while you're still figuring things out), you can leave it closed and add players yourself in Step 5.

Hit Save. Your round is now on the schedule. It will appear on the dashboard for everyone in the group. This is the moment the system goes from “configured” to “alive.”

Head to the Players page and start adding your crew. For each player you'll enter: first name, last name, email address, and their current playing handicap. The system uses the handicap immediately — it applies to their first round the moment you post results.

After adding the player, assign them to your group. A player can belong to multiple groups — so if Dave plays in both the Saturday group and the company scramble, add him once and assign him to both.

Once the player is in the system, you can send them an invite email directly from their profile. The invite lets them create their free player account, see the round schedule, and sign themselves up for future rounds. It's one click and takes about ten seconds per player.

Open your round and go to the signup list. Players who accepted their invite and signed themselves up will already appear here. For anyone who hasn't gotten the hang of self-signup yet (there's always a few), you can add them manually as an admin — regardless of whether signups are open or closed.

Review the list and make sure everyone who's playing is on it. The signup list is what the system uses to build teams in the next step, so a missing player means a lopsided team — or worse, a surprise extra player at the first tee.

The admin override is intentional: it exists precisely for the Dave scenario, where Dave said he'd be there, forgot to sign up, and is now standing on the first tee expecting to play. Add him. We've all been there.

With your signup list confirmed, head to the Teams section for the round. You have two options: auto-generate balanced teams based on handicap (the system does a snake draft by scoring ability, so each team gets a similar mix of strong and weak players), or drag-and-drop to build custom pairings yourself.

Auto-generation is the right call for most groups most of the time — it's fair, fast, and removes any accusations of favoritism in the pairing room. Custom drag-and-drop is great for when you have specific pairing requests, sponsor considerations, or you just know that Phil and Gary cannot be on the same team again after what happened at the Christmas scramble.

Once teams look right, lock them in. Players can see their team assignment through the app before they even arrive at the course.

From the round view, generate scorecards and print them. The generated scorecard includes team assignments, player names, handicaps, and the hole-by-hole layout for the course. It's everything the players need to track their own scores during the round.

Or grab a blank card and a pencil. Your Golf Group doesn't care how the scores get recorded during the round — it only cares that they get entered afterward. We respect the analog tradition. Some things should never change.

Players have two paths for scoring. The first: enter scores hole-by-hole in the app as you play. Scores appear live for the whole group. It's genuinely fun to watch the leaderboard shift in real time while you're still on the back nine.

The second: play with paper, collect the cards at the end of the round, and have the admin (or the players themselves) enter scores afterward. Both approaches result in the same outcome — a complete scorecard in the system.

Plenty of groups do a hybrid: some players use the app, some use paper, the admin reconciles at the end. It all flows into the same place. Use whatever combination keeps the round moving.

When all scores are in, post the results. This is the moment everything happens at once: leaderboards update, points are tallied, handicaps are recalculated, and the reward system awards points for the round. Players get notified. The season history builds.

Posting results is permanent — meaning once you post, the round is marked complete and handicaps adjust accordingly. If you need to correct a score after posting, you can edit it from the round detail page, but know that any adjustments will re-trigger recalculations. So double-check the scores before you hit Post.

That's genuinely it. The first round is in the books. No spreadsheet. No group text with seven conflicting versions of the scorecard. Just a clean record that everyone can see.