Your standing weekend group, club night, or seasonal scramble series — start to finish.
For members
You joined a league. Here's how it works.
What's a league on Golf Sync?
A league is your standing group — the same 8, 16, or 32 golfers who play a recurring season together. Saturday morning crew, men's club twilight, Tuesday-night ladies league, a charity scramble series. The league bundles its members, scheduled tournaments, pairings, dues, and chat in one place so the organizer doesn't recreate everything every week.
Joining a league
Most competitive leagues are invite-only. The organizer texts or emails you a code (something like SCRAMBLE-FALL-2026). Open the Leagues hub from your account menu, paste the code into the "Join by invite code" box, and you're in. Public leagues you can browse and join directly from the same hub — no code needed.
What you'll see as a member
From your league's detail page: an Announcements feed (organizer broadcasts), Events (one-off social outings), Polls (when does everyone want to play?), Chat (loose group banter), the Members list, and the Tournaments list. Each tournament card shows the date, format, registration count, and your registration status.
Tournament day as a player
Open the tournament from your league. Four tabs: Overview (date, location, register/unregister), Scorecard (your hole-by-hole entry — the screen you use during play), Leaderboard (live rankings, refreshes every 10s), and Pairings (your group + tee time). On tournament morning, head straight to Scorecard and start entering strokes — your organizer will have configured pairings and hole pars by then.
Pairings
When the organizer generates pairings, your group floats to the top of the list ("You're in Group 4") and your row is highlighted in every group. Each player shows their position in the group and a handicap snapshot (frozen at the moment pairings were generated, so it doesn't shift around mid-event). A lock icon means the organizer manually pinned that player.
Live leaderboard
Refreshes every 10 seconds while the tab is open. The column header tells you what you're looking at — "Strokes" for stroke play (lowest wins), "Points" for Stableford-family scoring (highest wins), "vs Target" for Chicago Quota. Net handicap allocation is supported across all systems. Tap the "?" chip next to any column header for a one-line definition. When two players tie, a small "Ranked here" note explains why one is ranked higher (back-9 score, last-6, etc.).
Skins and match-play side games
When your organizer configures a Skins game on a tournament, you'll see a Skins panel on the tournament page with live standings, who took which hole, and any pots that carried because of a tie. Match-play brackets appear for tournaments using single-elimination format — your upcoming match is called out at the top so you don't hunt for it.
After you register
Once you register for a tournament, you'll see a "Your spot: registered" card on the tournament page even before pairings drop. When the organizer generates pairings, that card flips to show your group number, tee time, starting hole, your handicap, and who you're playing with. If pairings already exist when you register late, the same card stays visible so you know to check with the organizer about your group assignment.
For owners + captains
You're running the league. Here's your toolkit.
Becoming an owner
Any signed-in Golf Sync user can create a league — leagues are free, there's no admin approval gate and no paid-tier requirement. The person who creates the league is the OWNER. From the league's manage page, you can promote any member to Delegate (full organizer powers minus deleting the league) or Scorer (live-scoring permissions only — useful for a designated scorekeeper who shouldn't send broadcasts or change member roles).
Setting up your league
Open Manage from the league detail page. The Settings tab is where you'd set the league's name, description, and invite-only flag. Most owners flip invite-only ON for competitive leagues so a public-leagues browser can't walk in. Generate a fresh invite code from this tab and share it however you like — text, email, group chat.
Inviting members
Three paths. (1) Share the invite code — copy from Settings, paste into your group chat. (2) Bulk-email invitations from the Members tab's "Invite by email" panel — paste a list of emails, members get an email with a one-click join link. (3) Promote an existing Golf Sync friend by adding their email to the bulk-invite list. The Invitations tab tracks status (sent / accepted / declined / revoked) so you can chase non-responders.
Member handicaps
This is the foundation that makes pairings, flights, and net scoring honest. From the Members tab you set every member's league handicap as the owner (or captain) — the system intentionally does NOT pull from each user's self-reported handicap. Range is 0.0–54.0, one decimal place. Every change is recorded in an audit log so disputes can be reconstructed ("how did Bob get a 12?"). Tournaments will refuse to generate pairings until every registered player has a league handicap set.
Flights (optional)
Flights are owner-defined groupings — typically by handicap band — that section the leaderboard. The Flights tab lets you create flights ("A 0–9, B 10–18, C 19+"), assign a color to each, and put each member into a flight on the Members tab. Assignment is manual, not automatic — you decide who's in which flight. The min/max handicap range you set is informational; it doesn't auto-bucket anyone. Flights are optional — pairings can be generated (random or tailored) whether or not players are flighted.
Scheduling tournaments
The Tournaments tab on the manage page lists everything you've scheduled, sorted most-recent-first. Tap "New" to create — name, date, time, course, format, scoring system, dues, max players, registration deadline. Once created, you can edit any field later (typo, weather move, scoring switch). Stableford scoring needs hole pars set — the system seeds 18 par-4s by default so the leaderboard shows real numbers from minute one. Full walkthrough →
Team events (Scramble, Best Ball, Alt Shot)
Pick a team format on a tournament and a Teams tab appears on the manage page. Build teams (by name, from a per-row dropdown, or Copy-from-pairings), set a captain + scorer per team, and you're ready. For Scramble / Alternate Shot the team plays one shared card; Best Ball keeps each player's own card and takes the best net per hole. If a team hands in a paper card, use Enter scores on the Teams tab to type their final total (or hole-by-hole) yourself. Full walkthrough →
Announcements + chat + polls
The Announcements tab is one-way broadcast (members read, you write). The Chat tab is two-way and rate-limited to keep noise down. The Polls tab is what you use to ask the group "does Saturday or Sunday work?" — multi-option, deadline-aware, and you can attach a poll to an announcement so members see the vote inline.
Email broadcasts
For long-form sends — schedule changes, course-of-record updates, sponsor announcements — use the Broadcast tab. Members get a real email, not just an in-app push. Use this sparingly; in-app announcements are better for routine updates.
When to use a Delegate
Common reasons: you're going on a trip and need someone to run Saturday's event; the league has co-organizers and you want both to have full power; you want to step back from day-to-day operations without giving up ownership. The Delegate can create + edit + delete tournaments, set hole pars, generate pairings, override scores, send broadcasts, and configure payouts — but they can't delete the league itself. You can demote them back to Member at any time from the same role picker.
Roles + ownership transfer
From the Members tab you can change any member's role: Member ↔ Delegate ↔ Scorer. Delegates can do almost everything you can — running tournaments, managing pairings, sending broadcasts — except deleting the league. Scorers have live-scoring authority only (override scores, mark DQ/WD). To transfer ownership entirely, contact support — owner transfer is a deliberate process so a compromised account can't hand the league to someone else accidentally.
Readiness card on your tournament page
When you open any tournament you own, you'll see a colored card at the top with a live status check — green if everything's configured, amber for heads-ups (e.g. "stroke index isn't set on 2 holes"), red for blockers (e.g. "hole pars aren't configured"). Each non-green item has a one-tap link to the fix. Members never see this card.
Side games (Skins, match play)
From a tournament's manage page on web you can add Skins games (lowest net on each hole wins one skin, ties carry, optional money value per skin). Members see live standings on both web and mobile during play — only the setup is web-only. For single-elimination match-play tournaments, generate a bracket from the same page — owners record results, the system handles seeding and advancement.
Removing a member
Tap the trash icon on any member row. They're removed from the roster, lose access to chat / announcements / polls / tournaments going forward, and their past tournament results stay attributed to them in historical leaderboards. There's no soft-delete — if you need them back, re-invite.
Mobile vs. web for owners
Most owner actions — creating tournaments, setting hole pars, generating pairings, live-scoring, building teams + entering team scores, sending push reminders, configuring payouts, match-play bracket generation — work on both mobile and web. A few setup tools stay web-only: Seasons setup (multi-week standings), the side-pots editor in payouts, and Skins setup (everyone sees live Skins standings on mobile, but you create + configure the Skins game from web). The mobile UI is intentionally a touch denser for organizers (you have a lot of tools); the player UI stays simple.