There are those whose scorecards look like a piece of art – clean numbers, neat, and everything filled out with precision.
Mine looks like the rest of my personal life, a disorganised mess of crossings out, numbers crammed into tiny margins, and a smattering of my initials, SC, where we’ve come to adding up and I’ve had to change a hole score where a mistake has been made.
Yes, I should clearly pay more attention – or do better at maths – but it got me thinking about the practice of essentially countersigning any alterations.
Plenty of us do it, of course, and maybe you can tell me where the practice started, but is it required under the Rules? Or are we all wasting our time?
Golf scorecard rules: Should I initial changes?
The answer is the latter. Rule 3.3b (2) states a player must carefully check the hole scores entered on the scorecard and must make sure both they and the marker certify those scores. But you knew that, of course.
It also says a player “must not change a hole score entered by the marker except with the marker’s agreement or the committee’s approval”.
But when that happens, doesn’t that require a smorgasbord of signatures? No.
Rule 3.3b (2) reveals no extra certification is required when changes to hole scores are made on a scorecard.
When a change has been approved, “neither the player nor the marker is required to initial or make any extra certification of the changed score”.
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