Support

No. Fairway Index calculates a Handicap Index using the World Handicap System exactly as published in the Rules of Handicapping, but it is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the USGA or The R&A, and the result is not an official Handicap Index. For a handicap that counts in competition, join a golf club affiliated with your national association. This app is for tracking your own game, settling friendly matches, and knowing where you stand.

On the old device, open More → Export backup and save the file somewhere you can reach from the new one — email it to yourself, or put it in iCloud, Drive or Dropbox. On the new device, open More → Restore backup and pick that file. Restoring merges by round, so nothing already on the new device is deleted.

Course names and locations come from an open worldwide database, but it only publishes Course Ratings and Slope Ratings for courses in the United States. If you play in Canada, the UK, Australia or anywhere else, the app will find your course but not its two rating numbers — and a Handicap Index genuinely cannot be calculated without them. When that happens, the app shows you the course it found and asks for the Course Rating and Slope Rating from the scorecard. It only asks once: the course is saved and appears under Recent from then on, and if you have an account it syncs to your other devices too.

Tap Course not listed? Add it by hand, give it a name, and enter the Course Rating and Slope Rating from the scorecard. It is saved for next time.

Trust the scorecard. Ratings change when a course is re-rated and the open database can lag. Add the course by hand with the correct values — and if you like, report the discrepancy to us so we can pass it upstream.

Three usual reasons. First, GHIN applies a daily Playing Conditions Calculation set by your association; this app defaults it to zero because only your association can compute it. Second, the USGA has not published the model it uses to estimate the holes you did not play, so nine-hole rounds and incomplete rounds use a documented approximation here — the exact figure used is always shown in the working. Third, GHIN knows your full history, including scores posted before you started using this app. Everything else — the lowest 8 of 20, the soft and hard caps, exceptional score reductions, net double bogey — follows the published Rules and is shown step by step.

A Handicap Index is the average of your best 8 Score Differentials out of your most recent 20 — not an average of everything. With fewer than 20 scores, a published table decides how many count and whether an adjustment applies. The dashboard highlights the rounds counting right now, and How this was calculated shows the table row being used.

No — 54 holes in any combination. Six nines, three eighteens, or a mix all work.

Yes. Everything except course search runs on the device. Search needs a connection, but courses you have already used are cached, so a course you play regularly keeps working offline.