How Good Track scores work

Two grades, one score

After every round, a golfer gives two grades. They answer two different questions.

Round rating: how did you play? Play ten rounds and you give ten round ratings. They judge your game and your day, so they have no effect on the course.
Course grade: how good is the course? Play ten rounds and you give ten course grades. Each one follows the course as you found it that day. Good Track averages your ten into your cumulative course grade for that course.
Good Track Score: what everyone thinks. Every golfer's cumulative course grade is combined into the course's Good Track Score (explained below). Only course grades count toward it. Round ratings never do.

The Log a Round screen in the Good Track app. Two rings under the heading How was it. The left ring, Round Rating, is set to 9.0. The right ring, Course Grade, asking how good Owls Nest Golf Club is, is set to 6.0. — What a golfer sees after a round. **Round Rating** (left) is how your round went. **Course Grade** (right) is how good the course is. Drag around a ring, or tap + and −, to set each one. Here: a great round (9.0) at a course that wasn't at its best (6.0).

Example: one golfer at one course

Three rounds shown to keep it short. Ten work the same way.

When	What happened	Round rating	Course grade
April	The course was beat up and soggy, but they played the best round of their life.	9 (great day)	6 (not at its best)
June	Lush, watered and beautiful, and a good round too.	8	9
August	A blow-up round, and everything went wrong. The course was still wonderful.	3 (awful day)	9 (still a great course)

The round ratings (9, 8 and 3) judge the golfer's game, so they never touch the course's score. The course grades (6, 9 and 9) judge the course, so they are averaged: (6 + 9 + 9) ÷ 3 = 8.0. That 8.0 is this golfer's cumulative course grade.

However many times someone plays a course, they get one voice: one cumulative course grade, added to every other golfer's.

The Good Track Score

The score is a 1 to 10 average of golfers' grades for the course, with three rules:

One golfer, one vote. However many rounds someone plays at a course, they count once.
Recent grades count a little more. A grade from the last 12 months counts in full, one from 1 to 3 years ago counts three-quarters, and an older one counts half.
Few grades are pulled toward the middle. The average is blended with the average grade across all Good Track courses, worth 3 grades, so one enthusiastic golfer can't make a course a 10. The pull fades as more golfers grade it.

Formula version 1. If it changes, this page changes with it.

When a course shows a score

5 or more golfers: the score appears, with how many golfers it rests on.
1 to 4 golfers: Limited data. The page says how many have graded it, with no number. A score on that little would mislead.
None yet: the page says so. We don't make up a number.

Private grades and grades from closed accounts are never counted. Pages never show a golfer's name, rounds, scores or profile.

Nobody can buy or change a grade

Courses can claim their page to keep the facts right and earn a Verified Course badge. Claiming never changes golfers' grades, scores, prices or photos, and a course can't pay to be higher.

The labels

Not verified: We don't have a trustworthy value for that fact yet (a phone number, say). Know it? Tell us.
Closed: The course has closed. The page stays so golfers can keep their old rounds, and says so.
Private club: Play is for members and their guests. Members and guests can still log and grade it.
Verified Course: The people who run the course checked in, and the facts are theirs.

Where the facts come from

Course facts come from OpenStreetMap contributors and OpenGolfAPI under the Open Database License, corrections from the clubs' own websites and from golfers, and what verified courses tell us. Spotted a mistake? support@goodtrack.golf.