Society day, without the spreadsheet.

What actually goes wrong on a society day

It is rarely the golf. It is the admin around it, and it is the same three things every time:

• Nobody knows the score until the end. Four groups spread over the course, four paper cards, and no idea who is winning until they are all handed in.
• The handicaps are guesswork. Half the society has a club handicap, half has a number they last checked in 2019, and somebody always plays off the wrong one.
• Someone has to do the maths. Usually in a car park, usually wrong, usually the same person every time.

How it works instead

Handicaps that make a mixed field fair

Societies are the hardest case for handicapping, because the spread is enormous: a five-handicapper and a genuine beginner in the same field. SHANKED works out a WHS-calculated Handicap Index from the rounds each player logs, converts it to a Course Handicap for the tees they are actually on, and allocates the shots hole by hole against the stroke index.

If a member has no history yet, they still get a number rather than nothing, and it sharpens with every round they play. The calculator shows exactly how the sums work if anyone wants to argue about it, which in a society, someone will.

The formats societies actually play

Stableford is the UK society default and it is here, along with stroke play, match play and skins (on Pro). Nine-hole rounds score properly, with the shots allocated over the nine actually played rather than half an eighteen and a shrug.

What it costs a society

Nothing, for the part a society needs. Scoring, handicaps, live multiplayer, the leaderboard and unlimited friends are all on the free tier and stay there. A member who wants shot tracking and strokes gained for their own game can go Pro at £4.99 a month, and that is their choice, not the society's.

It is not an official handicap, and we will not pretend

An official Handicap Index comes from a club affiliated to your national association. If your society runs a trophy that needs one, that is where it comes from. What SHANKED gives you is the same World Handicap System arithmetic, done properly, so a mixed field plays a fair game against each other. For the overwhelming majority of society days, that is exactly the problem being solved.