ScribbleScore sits between the moment the last card is handed in and the moment the result goes on the board. Here is the whole of it, in the order you would actually do it.
Name it, pick the date, choose the format and the handicap allowance. Load your course, or let ScribbleScore take the par and stroke index off the first card it reads.
Societies reuse the same setup every outing. A club sets its formats up once and picks one each week.
Full handicaps and gross scores in pen, signed, handed in at the desk. No phones between shots, no app on the first tee, no new habit to teach the field.
This is the part that does not change, and it is the point.
One photo per card at the desk. The photograph is checked before anything is read: glare, blur, a shadow, an edge cut off, all named rather than guessed through.
Cards queue and read on our side, so you keep photographing.
Names, handicaps and every hole come back as data, each value carrying its own confidence. Anything doubtful is read a second time before it ever reaches you.
Nineteen kinds of exception, split into must-fix and worth-a-look. Must-fix stops the card.
Strokes received off the stroke index, Stableford points against par, the handicap allowance, the format, ties and countback. Change anything and it all rebuilds.
Nothing is retyped when a score changes.
A scorer checks cards. An admin locks them and publishes. Players open a clean mobile result from a link, with no account and no app.
Who checked, who locked and who published are all recorded.
The field comes in over about forty minutes. Cards arrive in bursts, not in an orderly queue, and the person at the desk is also handing out drinks tokens and answering questions.
Cards are read on our side, so the desk keeps photographing while earlier ones are still being read.
Five cards, two still reading. Nothing at the desk is waiting on them.
ScribbleScore reads a photograph of the card and keeps that photograph. If anything is ever disputed, the signed original is still in the box under the desk, and the image of it is attached to the result. It never becomes the only copy of the score.
Reading a card is the easy half. The half that matters is what happens when the reading is not certain, because that is where an automated system either earns a committee's trust or loses it.
The digit on hole 7 could be a 6 or a 5. The same writer's 6 on hole 2 closes at the top; this one does not.
The real interaction, on synthetic data.
A committee changes its mind about the allowance more often than it would like to admit. When that happens nothing is retyped.
One result per player.
| # | Player | Plays off | Points | Back 9 | Back 6 | Back 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | T. Bhengu | 8 | 35 | 17 | 12 | 6 |
| T2 | A. Fourie | 13 | 33 | 16 | 10 | 5 |
| T3 | S. Dlamini | 10 | 33 | 15 | 9 | 5 |
| 4 | P. Nel | 17 | 27 | 13 | 9 | 4 |
Two results are level on points. Countback has separated them on the back nine, and the ranks are marked so nobody has to wonder why.
Switch format or allowance. Everything downstream is recomputed by the production engine.
Photograph them. Collect the cards as you always have, then take a photo of each one in ScribbleScore on a phone or tablet. You can work through a stack one after another; each card joins a queue and is read while you carry on photographing the next.
There is nothing to type in, and nothing changes for the golfers on the course.
No. That is the entire point. ScribbleScore brings you the values it is unsure about and the ones that disagree with something else on the card, and leaves the rest alone.
There are nineteen kinds of exception, split into two groups. Must-fix ones, like a missing score or a name nobody can read, stop the card being marked as checked. Worth-a-look ones, like a total that does not match the holes, are shown to you but do not block anything.
It becomes an exception and comes to you, with the photograph of the card beside it and the readings it thinks are possible. You pick the right one, or type the right one.
A cell nobody can read is not silently filled in. It is either resolved by a person or it stops the card from being marked as checked.
About 45 seconds for a four-player card. Cards are read on our side rather than on your phone, so you can keep photographing while earlier ones are still being read.
No. That is a deliberate design decision, not a limitation. A player opens a link in their browser and sees the result. No account, no download, no password.
If someone wants it on their home screen they can add it, and it opens full screen like an app. That is their choice, not a requirement, and nothing is withheld from people who do not.