What is Mates Handicap and how is it calculated?
Mates Handicap is your own index inside Golf with Mates. It starts from the official handicap you first entered in the app, and gets refined as you log rounds with your friends. It's opt-in and off by default — flip the switch in Profile → Mates Handicap to have it used for new rounds.
Important: Mates Handicap is NOT an official handicap under any federation (WHS / R&A / USGA / SGF). It doesn't replace your official index and it isn't reported to your home club. Use it for friendly play only.
How it's built:
- 0 rounds logged → your Mates index equals your first official HCP (the anchor).
- 1–7 rounds logged → a weighted blend of your best rounds and the anchor, gradually leaning on real rounds as the sample grows.
- 8+ rounds logged → the anchor retires and we use the standard WHS-lite calculation: the best 8 score differentials from your last 20 qualifying rounds.
The anchor is frozen. We capture it the first time you enter an official HCP in the app, and it never shifts if you later edit your official HCP — that keeps your Mates index stable and predictable.
What counts as a qualifying round:
- Individual-ball formats only (Stroke, Stableford, Match, Skins, Nassau, Bingo Bango Bongo). Team formats like Scramble, Foursome, Chapman and Wolf are excluded because there's no individual ball.
- The round must be completed with a full set of hole details (par + stroke index) so we can compute a proper score differential with net-double-bogey caps.
- Rounds with missing data or unrealistic differentials are skipped by a sanity guard.
Each qualifying round is stored with its score differential in the background, so your history is always ready — but it only drives your round handicap when the toggle is on.