Choose how the tournament is played and scored before anyone starts a scorecard, and before you hand out join codes. Once a card exists, the scoring system is locked, and so is the choice between one team card and individual cards. You can still swap Scramble for Alternate Shot, or Individual for Best Ball, because nothing moves.

Changing anything else means deleting the tournament and making a new one. That gives it a new join code, and every code you've already handed out stops working.

On the Tournament console's Format tab:

• Individual: Everyone plays their own ball and keeps their own score.
• Scramble: The team hits everyone's shot, picks the best one, and plays on from there.
• Best Ball: Everyone plays their own ball all the way out; the team takes its best score on each hole.
• Alternate Shot: Partners play one ball and take turns hitting it.
• Team Total: Everyone plays their own ball and keeps their own scorecard, and the team's score is those cards added together. Use this when you are paying prizes to single players AND to teams out of the same round.

Scramble and Alternate Shot keep one card per team, which anyone on the team can enter, in the Golf Sync app. Every other format keeps a card per player, on the website or in the app.

A tournament in a season can also start from a season-day setup on the same tab: a Stableford day, a match play day, a best ball day, a team stroke total day, or a 4-3-2 Shuffle day (teams of four count their best 2 net scores on each of holes 1-6, their best 3 on 7-12 and all 4 on 13-18).

A Putt Putt event plays the same formats on a mini-golf course, over 1 to 18 holes, gross, with no handicaps.

Five ways to score, set in Scoring system & handicaps on the Format tab. The points systems (Stableford, Modified Stableford and Quota) need every player on their own card, so they aren't offered for a scramble, the other team formats or a Ryder Cup. The XP create form offers Stroke play, Stableford and Quota; set Modified Stableford or Match play on the tournament afterwards.

Two sides play head-to-head matches, each worth 1 point, scored in strokes. Choose it with the Ryder Cup chip under Start from a format on the XP create form. Its Four-ball handicaps are either Each player nets their own ball (USGA) or The side plays off its low handicap. Pick the sides and the matches on the first tournament's Pairings & Teams tab.

1. The event's Use handicaps (on the XP create form, and later in Event settings) decides whether anyone gets strokes at all. When it's off, everyone plays gross, whatever each tournament says, and no screen warns you. A new XP starts with it off; tapping the Stableford, Quota, Best ball or Ryder Cup chip under Start from a format turns it on, and choosing a system from the Scoring menu doesn't.
2. Each tournament then says how handicaps apply: With handicaps or Scratch for Stableford and Modified Stableford (in Scoring system & handicaps); the net column and the ranking on the Boards tab for stroke play; the team handicap on the Score rules & entry tab for team formats.

With handicaps, strokes fall on the hardest holes by stroke index. A course handicap of 12 gets one stroke on the holes with stroke index 1 to 12; a course handicap of 24 gets two strokes on stroke index 1 to 6 and one on 7 to 18.

A stroke tournament is gross unless you make it net. For a net stroke event: turn on the event's Use handicaps, load every player's handicap, then on the Boards tab tick Show net scores and set Rank the board by to Net. Showing net alone adds a column and leaves the order on gross. On a Golf Sync XP, Break a net tie on chooses gross or net holes for a tie.

In Scoring system & handicaps:

• Handicaps are: Handicap index (adjusted for each tee) or Playing handicaps (used exactly as entered, when your players bring the number they play off). Locked once a card exists.
• Maximum hole score: no cap, or net double bogey (par + 2 + the player's strokes on that hole), the World Handicap System standard. It applies hole by hole in stroke play too.
• Course handicap cap: the most strokes anyone gets (for example 36).
• Custom point values: your own table for Stableford or Modified Stableford.

On the Score rules & entry tab:

• A shared card (a scramble or alternate shot) gets one team handicap from Position weights: the USGA publishes 35 / 15 for teams of two and 25 / 20 / 15 / 10 for teams of four.
• Best ball uses Best-ball handicap allowance (%), a share of each player's course handicap. The USGA recommends 85% for four-ball stroke play and 90% for four-ball match play.

A new tournament copies its pars from the last tournament played on that course, or from the course scorecard, or starts at par 4 on every hole. Check them against the real card on the Hole pars tab before you open scoring: every Stableford and Quota point depends on par. Players can't start their cards until every hole has a par.

Enter the stroke index there too. Without it, handicap strokes fall on holes 1, 2, 3 and so on in order, and the readiness list warns you. Fix the tournament itself: a change to the course scorecard reaches only tournaments made afterwards.

Skins (gross or net), Wolf, Vegas, Nassau with presses, and Bingo Bango Bongo run alongside any format, from the Tournament console's Side games tab. See the Wolf guide for its rules.

Closest to the pin and long drive are contests. Contests are measured with a tape. The app records each mark and ranks them; it never measures. Set them up on the Contests tab.