Proxies

Proxies are the contest games that run alongside the main event — Closest to the Pin, Long Drive, Longest Putt, Straightest Drive and the rest. Unlike every other game, they aren’t scored from your card. Somebody stands over a shot, and either a measurement gets recorded or a marker gets planted. Whoever holds the contest when play ends wins it.

A proxy is contested by everyone playing that hole, not just your foursome. Your group arrives at the 7th and sees the mark to beat — who set it and how close they were — recorded by a group that came through hours earlier. Beat it and it becomes yours until someone beats you. That’s the whole game.

Measured contests record a real distance — fourteen feet two inches from the pin — and the number settles any argument. Staked contests are the traditional marker in the ground: no number, whoever claimed it last holds it. Closest-to-the-pin contests usually measure; long drive usually stakes. Either way the app tracks who currently holds it.

Each contest is funded on its own. A sponsored or donated prize — a dozen balls, a bag, a gift card — moves no money through the app; it just records the winner for the program. A cash contest draws from the round’s pot, split across whichever cash contests actually got won, so nothing is stranded on a hole nobody claimed.

One hole can host several contests at once. A Men’s and a Women’s Long Drive off the same tee are two separate contests with two separate holders and two separate prizes — scope a contest to a division and it only competes within it.

Set up on a tournament or outing round, under that round’s Games screen. Winners can be claimed on the hole itself while you play, or entered afterwards by the organizer. They appear on the round’s results, on the tournament’s consolidated results, and — if you’ve credited a sponsor — on the printed program, filled in automatically.