Membership
- Looking around is free: courses, the map, the weather, prizes and these rules.
- Gadzook Golf membership is $10 a month. It lets you make and accept wagers, keep scorecards, and get your handicap and stats.
- The League plan is $20 a month and includes the membership. Only league members are ranked, in the league and on crew boards; everyone’s matches still count for their own handicap and stats.
- Each plan lasts a month from the day you pay, and you can renew any time; renewing adds a month to what you have left.
Your player name
- Pick one player name the first time you open Wagers. It’s how you show up in matches and the league.
- Names are unique. Capitals, spaces and punctuation don’t count, so “Alex R.” and “alexr” are the same name.
- One name per person, and it can’t be changed or deleted, so your history always stays with you.
- On a Claude link your name belongs to your Claude account. On gadzooklabs.com it belongs to your phone; save your recovery code to use it on another phone.
Wagers
- Set it up. Choose the course you’ll both play, your opponent (a registered player), the date, the format and a prize.
- Invite. Your opponent sees the wager, the handicaps and the strokes before they accept. Only they can accept it.
- Play and score. Each of you fills in your own column on the shared scorecard. It updates on both phones.
- Finish. Either player finalizes the match. The loser can then buy the prize for the winner; a tie owes nothing.
Formats: Match play (18 holes): win the most holes. Stroke play (18 holes): lowest total. Front 9 only: lowest total over nine holes.
Prizes
See the prize catalogue · Official Rules
- Every prize is a physical item shipped to the winner: golf balls, gloves, apparel, gear. No cash, free rounds, bar tabs or lessons.
- Loser buys the prize: when the match is finished, the loser can buy it in the app and it ships to the winner, who enters a shipping address. Nothing is paid when the wager is made. It’s on trust: nobody has to buy. A tie owes nothing.
- Gadzook isn’t part of the bet: it holds no money and pays nothing out. The prize shop just sells the prize.
Handicaps and strokes
- Your handicap index is the average of your best 3 of your last 20 round ratings, once you have 3 rated rounds. Until then it’s the official GHIN index you enter on the Wagers screen. With neither, you play off scratch.
- Course handicap = index × slope ÷ 113 + (course rating − par), half for nine holes. Example: a 12.0 index at Five Ponds (69.8 / 126, par 72) plays as 11.
- Strokes: the higher course handicap gets the difference, one per hole on the hardest holes first. They show as dots on the scorecard.
- Handicaps are locked in when the wager is made, so later rounds don’t change an agreed match. Turn off “Use handicaps” for a straight gross match.
- With handicaps on, match play and stroke play are decided on net scores and the result says “(net)”.
Scorecards
- Enter your own score on each hole. You can view your opponent’s column but not change it.
- Par starts from a standard layout; either player can correct a hole’s par to match the course’s card.
- A match play card can end early once the match is decided; it still counts as a win or loss, but only a full card gets a round rating.
How the league is ranked
Which rounds count. The league ranks your golf, not your wagers. It counts every round you post on the Scorecard page once your playing partner confirms it, plus your scorecard from every finished wager. Who won a wager, and its prize, don’t count.
Round rating. Every full scorecard gets a rating, using the same formula as golf handicaps:
(your score − course rating) × 113 ÷ slope
- Course rating is what a scratch golfer is expected to shoot on that course. Slope is how much harder it plays for everyone else (113 is average, 140 is hard). Both are the course’s official USGA numbers from the men’s middle tees, shown on every course page.
- Lower is better. A 0 is a scratch round; a 15 is about how a 15 handicap plays.
- Any hole counts as at most par + 4, so one disaster doesn’t sink a round. A front-nine round is rated against half the course rating and doubled.
Your league rating is the average of your best 3 round ratings of the season. You need 3 rated rounds to be ranked; until then you’re listed as provisional. Ties go to more rated rounds.
Example: Jen’s season
| Course | Score | Rating / slope | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broad Run | 75 | 70.9 / 132 | 3.5 ✓ |
| Inniscrone | 76 | ≈70.1 / 132 | 5.1 ✓ |
| Raven’s Claw | 75 | 68.2 / 124 | 6.2 ✓ |
| Lederach | 81 | 69.8 / 131 | 9.7 |
Broad Run: (75 − 70.9) × 113 ÷ 132 = 3.5. Her best three average (3.5 + 5.1 + 6.2) ÷ 3 = 4.9. The same 75 rated 3.5 at Broad Run but 6.2 at Raven’s Claw, because Broad Run is the harder course.
- Players’ difficulty and “nice” votes on course pages are opinions only and don’t affect the league.
- Tap a player in the league table to see each of their rounds and which three count.
The season
- The league season runs April 1 to October 31. Only rounds played in the season count, and every April starts fresh.
- Off-season rounds and matches are friendlies: they count toward your handicap and stats, but not in the league.
Posting a round
- Posting rounds is part of the League plan. Open Scorecard in the More menu, choose the course, date and holes, name the player you played with, and type in your score for each hole.
- Your playing partner confirms the round in their own app. It counts only after they confirm, and they have 7 days to do it. They need a player name in the app, but no plan.
- Post a round up to 7 days after you play it. You can change or delete it while it’s waiting; once it’s confirmed it’s final.
- A round you played as a wager already counts through the wager’s scorecard, so there’s no need to post it again.
Crews
- A crew is your regular group, with its own private leaderboard. Join one with its code.
- Crew boards count only the wagers you play as crew matches, with wins and losses. Crews are optional and don’t affect the league.
Fair play
- Only the two players in a match can enter scores, change pars or finalize it.
- Finished matches can’t be removed, and confirmed rounds are final, so the league can’t be changed after the fact.
- Only confirm rounds you actually saw played.
- Only you can change your GHIN index. Enter your real one; it keeps matches fair until your own rounds take over.
- Course ratings come from published sources; if you spot a wrong one, tell us at info@gadzooklabs.com.