Deciding when to call it quits can be tricky, but the Rules of Golf offer valuable advice for club committees wrestling with the question
There are players who will happily carry on in a hurricane. There are others who will want the whole thing called off at the first drips of a shower.
But in an outdoor game at the mercy of the elements, there are times when you or your competitions committee may be under pressure to bring a halt to proceedings and cancel a competition.
It’s a tricky decision to make and won’t necessarily please everyone – especially those who might have already finished and submitted a good round.
So how should your club approach the question? What happens to rounds already played? Do they count for handicap?
There are some nuggets of advice in the Committee Procedures found in the Official Guide to the Rules of Golf, as well as criteria to follow in the World Handicap System.
When should a stroke play competition be cancelled?
The decision is largely in your hands. There is no set guidance for when a committee should cancel a round, with it depending “on the circumstances in each case”.
But the committee procedures ask you to think about this way: “A round should be cancelled only in a case where it would be very unfair not to cancel it”.
If that sounds rather open ended, the advice is more concrete about how round scores are dealt with. They are cancelled, including those where a disqualification penalty has been imposed – unless it was for serious misconduct or a breach of the club Code of Conduct.
Can scores still count for handicap purposes?
Though rounds may be cancelled, “scores returned from an abandoned competition are still entered into a player’s handicap record as usual”, says a guidance document on the Rules of Handicapping produced by the home nations. Holes Not Started and Holes Not Completed will also be identified.
If rounds are played during part of a day, a Playing Conditions Calculation can also be worked out with software used to indicate which scores are included.
The guidance states: “The Handicap Index calculation for those players will utilise the separate PCC rather than the PCC for the day.”
What are the rules for match play competitions?
A match should not be cancelled once play has started because the players are enduring the same conditions and there is no advantage.
That said, Rule 5.7 allows those in match play to stop play for any reason – “except if doing so delays the competition”.
If that happens, or if the “committee feels that conditions are such that play should be suspended, the match should resume from where it was suspended”.
And when it comes to lightning, any player can stop in any event – stroke or match play – if they “reasonably believe there is danger from lightning, but must report to the committee as soon as possible”.
Do scores still count for handicap purposes?
Though rounds may be cancelled, “scores returned from an abandoned competition are still entered into a player’s handicap record as usual”, says a guidance document on the Rules of Handicapping produced by the home nations. Holes Not Started and Holes Not Completed will also be identified.
If rounds are played during part of a day, the guidance says a Playing Conditions Calculation can be worked out with software used to indicate which scores are included.
It states: “The Handicap Index calculation for those players will utilise the separate PCC rather than the PCC for the day.”
