Ranking
New players start unranked - your first win puts you on the ladder.

Beat a player ranked above you and you move up halfway between your rank and theirs, rounded down. Example: you're #20, you beat the #1 player, your new rank is #10.

Beat the player directly above you (say you're #6 and you beat #5) and you simply swap - you become #5, they become #6.

Beat a player ranked below you and nothing changes - there's no reward for playing easier opponents.

Lose a match and your rank stays exactly where it is, unless the player who beat you was ranked directly below you - in that case they leapfrog you and you drop one spot. That's the only way you can move down.

Reporting a result
Either player can submit - the multiplayer scorecard shows everyone in the room together with a room code, so whoever uploads it, the site can already see both scores. Upload it on the Submit a score page after the match. The room code on the card gets matched against the pairing the site created when your queue slot filled - a genuine result lines up automatically; anything that doesn't match a real pairing gets flagged for a manual look rather than accepted on trust.

Ties - sudden death
If the match ends level, it's sudden death. Both players head back to the golf shack and play a fresh round on the same course. Whoever falls behind first loses. Still tied after a hole? Play another, and another, until someone takes the lead.

Format
Unless stated otherwise, all Singles ladder matches are stroke play - total strokes across the round, lowest score wins. Only matches played through the live queue count toward your rank; practice rounds don't affect it.

Matchmaking is live through the queue now, teams fixed by join order (1st + 2nd v 3rd + 4th). Not ranked yet - the ladder comes here once Singles is proven.

Up to 8 players, casual - not ranked and no ladder impact. Just a fast way to get into a game with whoever's around.

Every submitted round shows its score two ways: total strokes and strokes relative to the community average - not the game's own par, since that doesn't reliably reflect how hard a course actually plays. A course's average is calculated from each player's own average on it, not raw rounds, so nobody can skew it by uploading a lot of screenshots for one course.