Advantage Golf Croquet

What Advantage does

Advantage Golf Croquet lets players of different strengths play each other with level-play tactics and an equal chance of winning. There are no extra strokes and no bisques. Every game starts 0–0, and each side plays to its own target score, read from a published table by the two players' handicaps. The stronger side normally has the higher target. A game ends when one side reaches its target.

This is the WCF method effective 1 March 2026. It replaced an earlier one in which the game began at a score other than 0–0; the two are tactically identical, but the numbers a manager reads are targets now, not starting scores. Games your event recorded under the older method keep the scores they were played to.

Turning it on

Advantage is chosen when the event is created: + New Event, step 1, the third card — Advantage Golf Croquet, under Golf Croquet and Association Croquet. See Create an event.

There is no switch for it on Details or anywhere else afterwards, so an event set up as ordinary Golf Croquet cannot be turned into an Advantage one — create it again from the wizard instead.

From that one choice every surface changes together: the roster gains a Handicap column, each game states both targets, a game is won on scoring fraction rather than on the higher score, blocks order on net SF, and the compiled Event details says the event is played under Advantage.

Game length

Advantage is still a Golf Croquet event, so the game length is set where it always is — Match format, per competition. The published tables cover three lengths, and the level-play target is what names them:

A competition on any other length has no published table to read, so it keeps level play — both sides to the same total — even inside an Advantage event.

Handicaps, and where they come from

The Handicap column on Players is what the targets are read from. Type the real handicap wherever a player has one — that is what the event should be played off. Where none is entered the tool falls back to the handicap the player's dGrade lands in and shows it greyed, so a derived number is never mistaken for an assigned one.

A pair is never derived. Enter half the sum of the two partners' handicaps, halves rounded up; above 12, round to an even number. With no handicaps at all every pairing plays to the same target and Advantage is doing nothing — the Players tab says so plainly rather than letting a whole event be scored that way.

What you see on a game

Every fixture states both targets: Adrian plays to 7 · Antonio plays to 5. It appears on the order of play, the schedule, the public event page, the display board and the Swiss console, so nobody has to carry a table around the lawns.

On paper, the Print Pack's Order of play and Score sheets carry both targets on every game — the score sheet the drawn scores too — and in Download Spreadsheet it is the two Advantage sheets that carry them; the spreadsheet's ordinary score sheet does not, and under Advantage a form without both targets cannot decide a game.

How a game is won

Not by the higher score. Each side has run a share of its own target — its scoring fraction, SF for short — and the higher fraction wins:

Adrian plays to 7, Antonio to 5. The game finishes 6–5. Adrian has run 6/7 = 86%; Antonio has run 5/5 = 100%. Antonio wins, on the lower score.

That is why an Advantage result is never a bare scoreline. Everywhere a played game is shown — the scorer's list, the standings expansion, the public event page — it is printed as both fractions: 6/7 · 86% v 5/5 · 100%.

A game that runs to the end can only be won: the side that reaches its target is on 100% and the other cannot be. The fractions matter for a game that stops early — time called, a concession — where the scoreline alone says nothing.

Drawn scores

Where the two targets share a factor, there are scores at which both sides have run the same share of their own target — a genuine draw. The tool works these out and prints them with the fixture: a draw only at 3–2 or 6–4. Where the targets have no common factor there is no drawn score at all and nothing is printed.

This matters only for a game that stops before either player reaches their target. The WCF's guidance provides for timed Advantage games and decides them on scoring fraction, and it accepts that an unfinished game can end with both players on an identical fraction. Where a drawn result is not acceptable, organisers may require one further hoop to be played to decide it. Knowing the drawn scores in advance is what lets a manager say so before the game starts rather than after it.

Scoring on the day

Score an Advantage event on the Scoring section — the same list, steppers and sheet as any other event. Three things differ:

• The entry sheet opens with the targets. A blue band above the steppers reads Advantage · targets 7 ~ 5, names which side plays to which, and — where the targets have one — warns which score would be a draw if time is called. Each side's stepper stops at that side's own target rather than at a shared total.
• The winner is bolded on the fraction, so the lower score can be the winning one, in the list, the standings, the matrix and the brackets alike. In a best-of match the loser of a game still plays first in the next, worked out from the fraction.
• End game early is offered whenever the fractions can separate the two sides, not only when the scores differ: 6–6 against targets of 8 and 7 is 75% against 86%, a result.

Targets are stored with the game as it was played, not recomputed afterwards, so a handicap corrected later does not rewrite a game already scored.

Ordering a block

Net hoops is not offered in an Advantage competition and is not a sound way to order one: it compares scores made against different targets. Net SF replaces it — and it is a tiebreaker, not the ranking itself. Players are ranked on match wins first, exactly as anywhere else; net SF separates those level on wins.

Each game contributes the gap between the two sides' percentages, and those gaps are added up across the block:

Tapping a player in the standings opens exactly that working, game by game, with the total and the per-game figure under it.

The figure is counted in percentage points, not percent — a percentage of nothing — which is why the column carries no % sign and why it runs past 100 over a full block. It can be negative.

Net SF per game is the same measure divided by games played. In a round robin the two give the same order once everyone has played everyone, so a block defaults to Net SF. A Swiss defaults to Net SF per game: Swiss game counts differ by design, and a running total across unequal counts would reintroduce the unfairness win percentage exists to avoid. Both keys are in the picker for either format.

See Tiebreakers for the chain net SF sits in, and Scoring settings for setting it.

Ranking

Advantage games are not submitted to the WCF ranking, and the tool does not offer WCF export for them.

Related

• Create an event — where Advantage is switched on.
• Players — the Handicap column and derived handicaps.
• Scoring — entering results on the day.
• Tiebreakers — net SF and the rest of the chain.
• Match formats — game points and best-of.