Okay, so, let’s talk about golf. I’m a huge fan, and I watch a lot of tournaments – PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, whatever’s on. I was watching this event the other day, and I saw something that got me a bit confused – an asterisk next to some of the players’ names on the leaderboard. I thought, “What’s that all about?”
So, I hit up Google, did a bit of digging. Turns out, it’s actually pretty straightforward. It’s all about how the tournament is set up.
Here’s the deal:
- Sometimes, in these big tournaments, they have what’s called a “two-tee start.” This means that instead of everyone starting their round on the first hole, they split the players into two groups.
- One group starts on hole number 1, like you’d expect.
- The other group, though, they start on the back nine, on hole number 10.
Now, the asterisk is just there to let you know which players started on the back nine. It’s a simple way of showing that there was a two-tee start because of some reason, like a delay or something. It doesn’t really affect the scores or anything, it’s just an indicator for the viewers.
Then I also looked into the stableford scoring. I think this is about the handicap, they said the score will be reduced to zero points for a hole. To be honest, I didn’t get that part.
I also learned how to read the leaderboard. It is not difficult. I just need to start from the top and work my way down. The first-place player is at the top of the leaderboard. And then it goes on.
There’s also this thing called the “Used” column, and sometimes there’s an asterisk there too. Apparently, that means the score was used to calculate the player’s Handicap Index. I am not sure, But that’s a bit too deep into the weeds for me right now. Maybe some other day I can figure that out.
Anyway, that’s what I learned about the asterisk on the PGA leaderboard. It’s a simple little thing, but it’s good to know what it means. Now I can watch these tournaments and not be confused by that little star next to the players’ names. Pretty cool, right?
