Gang,

Just a quick one. Our club has a 4BBB event coming up but have advised that they are handicapping each player individually. My query is whether or not your partner is still able to give advice on lines of putts and such.

I imagine so, as there isn’t an individual comp (that I know of) so they are your partner as opposed to a FC.

Just wanted to make sure.

Can’t see how they can do this and conform to both the Australian handicapping system and the Rules of Golf at the same time.

The Rules of Golf, of course, specifically allow partners to share advice in a four-ball, and I can’t see how you can ‘ban’ it.

But the Australian handicapping system is very specific about how to handicap a four-ball, and it’s definitely not based on full individual scores, rather it’s based on assigned Stableford points where a player doesn’t score on the hole, and the team must score 42 points etc.

It would be any player’s right to complain to Golf Australia that the club must follow the correct procedure outlined in the Australian handicapping system. The club must follow it if they are handicapping a four-ball event where advice is allowed.

To quote the email:

Therefore, you need to register as per normal, and enter your scores at the completion of your round. Once this is done you will be prompted to select your partner,who will then enter their scores.

Maybe this means that each round isn’t individually handicap, but it’s the impression I got.

Not sure if this clarifies it… The way I looked at it, I’ll just play my normal stableford round, and see how we go. :)

Actually a bit of digging, I get where they are coming from now after a bit of digging.

If we do well, it wil be handicapped. I wasn’t aware of those conditions… Still, I’ll play my card out so I know how I fared.

Thanks for your help Publish. How’s Royal Trennam held up with the lack of the wet stuff?

I may have got it wrong but is it not that the comp will be played and scored as a normal BB (ie best stableford score of partners) using 3/4 of handicap (or whatever fraction is used in Australia) for results purposes.

But that individual gross scores per hole are entered for calculating handicap returns when the system will use full handicaps.