Save your courses once — they auto-fill every time you score a round.
Enter a course once and it saves forever. No more typing par and yardage every round.
The first time you play a new course with this tracker, you enter par and yardage for all 18 holes. That takes about two minutes in the parking lot before your round. From that point forward, you never enter that data again. Every future round at the same course opens pre-loaded and ready to score in seconds.
It also means you can store the Course Rating and Slope in one place. The next time you log that round to your Handicap Tracker, those numbers fill in automatically. No more hunting for the scorecard you stuffed in your bag pocket after the round.
These two numbers show up everywhere in golf handicapping, but a lot of golfers don't actually know what they mean. Here's a plain-English breakdown:
Course Rating is a decimal number like 71.4. It represents the expected score of a scratch golfer (someone who plays to a 0 handicap) on that course under normal conditions. A higher course rating means the course is harder. A rating of 73.2 is more difficult than a rating of 69.8, even if the par is the same.
Slope Rating is a whole number, most commonly somewhere between 100 and 140, with 113 being average. It measures how much harder the course plays for a bogey golfer (roughly a 20-handicap) versus a scratch golfer. A high slope — say, 135 or higher — means the course punishes mistakes much more severely than an average course. A low slope (below 110) means the course is forgiving for higher-handicap players.
Both numbers are printed on the physical scorecard at every golf course. Look for a table with rows for each tee color — white, blue, red, gold, black — and columns for Rating and Slope. Different tees have different ratings and slopes because the course plays differently depending on where you start.
Save the rating and slope for the tees you actually play. A lot of golfers default to the middle tees out of habit, but if you consistently play the forward tees, save those numbers — your handicap calculation will be more accurate.
If you play different tees depending on the day, you can update the course rating and slope when you log each round in the Handicap Tracker. The saved course rating is just a default — it doesn't lock you in.
Par is what matters most for scoring. Yardage is optional — it shows up on the scorecard and gives you context, but it doesn't affect any calculations. If you don't know the yardage off the top of your head, you can leave those fields blank and fill them in later via the Edit button.
Most 18-hole courses have a total par of 70, 71, 72, or 73. If your totals look off after entering all 18 holes, double-check a few holes — it's easy to accidentally set a par-5 as a par-4. The running total in the form updates as you type, so you'll see the discrepancy right away.
Courses change. Occasionally a hole gets lengthened, a par-5 becomes a par-4, or a course does a full redesign. The Edit button on any saved course lets you update the name, rating, slope, or any individual hole's par and yardage. Changes save immediately and apply to all future rounds at that course.
Deleting a course only removes it from your course library — it does not delete any rounds you've already logged at that course. Your round history stays intact regardless of what you do to your course list.
Everything on this site is connected. When you start a round on the Digital Scorecard and select a saved course, all 18 holes fill in with your stored par and yardage. When you finish that round and send it to the Handicap Tracker, the course rating and slope you saved here auto-populate in the form. The round then saves to My Rounds with the course name attached. Build up your course library once, and the whole system runs smoother for every round after that.
I play maybe six or eight different courses through the year, and once I had them all saved, I stopped thinking about setup entirely. I just open the scorecard, tap the course, and start scoring. The two minutes I spent entering hole data on the first round paid off immediately on the second visit. If you play the same courses repeatedly — which most golfers do — just save them all up front. It's worth it.