Stroke allowances on 9 holes

[upsidedown]

HiD was playing in Daily Mail Foursomes today at an away course and only the front 9 was open. They were to receive 13 shots but stroke 13 was on the back 9 so by agreement they missed out on a shot as they'd agreed to play the front 9 twice.

Was this the right course of action or should they have received 6 shots on one 9 and 7 on the other ?

 

[duncan mackie]

The latter.

The committee is responsible for allocating the strokes but not the number of strokes. If they are entitled to 13 strokes the only question is where.

In practice, and the absence of any definition, the stroke indexes should be allocated on the basis of the order the holes are played ie for the first 9 holes the front 9 indexes are used, and the back 9 indexes as published should then apply to the second 9 played (it doesn't matter if pars or relative difficulty change - it doesn't matter at all!)

 

[upsidedown]

Cheers Duncan.

As it happened they lost 4 and 2 but had they followed the procedure you describe above they would have had shots on the last 4 holes rather than just 1 by using the front 9 again .