What Happens If You Don’t Complete A Round When You’re Putting In A Card?

You’ve signed up to play a round but can’t or don’t get all the way round. What happens if you’re putting in a card?

Scorecard
What Happens If You Don’t Complete A Round When You’re Putting In A Card?
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Golf can be a slow old game at times and, occasionally, you might either run out of time before completing a round, needing to get onto the next part of your day, or, you might simply have had enough of looking at the rear-ends of the group in front!

Either way, what happens if you are forced to, or choose to walk off before completing a round? If you are putting in a card, does it still count for anything?

Well, let’s start with competition. If you are playing an 18-hole stroke play event and you do not complete each hole then you will have posted a No Return (NR) for the purposes of that competition.

However, if you were playing in another form of individual competition, say it was Stableford for example, your score will still count. In Stableford, you would accrue points for the holes you did play, but no points on the holes you didn’t. Your total Stableford score would be lower than it might have been had you finished your round, but it would still be valid and acceptable.

Walking with golf clubs on back

Walking in

(Image credit: Getty Images)

When it comes to handicap purposes, if you’re putting in a card through competition or General Play, the World Handicap System, (WHS) has provisions to work out and give you a comparative (adjusted) score, based on the holes you have played... with one requirement…

If you signed up before the round to play 18 holes, as long as you have completed 10 holes, the score will be acceptable for handicap purposes. WHS will allocate either a nett par or nett par plus one for the holes that you didn’t play, producing an adjusted 18-hole score.

If you signed up to play only nine holes, you will need to have completed all nine holes for the score to be acceptable for handicap purposes.

If you don’t complete an 18-hole round, but you have played 10 or more holes, you should still enter the card for WHS handicap purposes.

Fergus Bisset
Contributing Editor

Fergus is Golf Monthly's resident expert on the history of the game and has written extensively on that subject. He is a golf obsessive and 1-handicapper. Growing up in the North East of Scotland, golf runs through his veins and his passion for the sport was bolstered during his time at St Andrews university studying history. He went on to earn a post graduate diploma from the London School of Journalism. Fergus has worked for Golf Monthly since 2004 and has written two books on the game; "Great Golf Debates" together with Jezz Ellwood of Golf Monthly and the history section of "The Ultimate Golf Book" together with Neil Tappin , also of Golf Monthly. 

Fergus once shanked a ball from just over Granny Clark's Wynd on the 18th of the Old Course that struck the St Andrews Golf Club and rebounded into the Valley of Sin, from where he saved par. Who says there's no golfing god?