A match-play tournament is incomplete without a flare-up or two around gimmes. Our Golf Digest Match Play has been no exception. Some staffers are stingy with concessions, others are generous, and some are generous until they realize they shouldn’t be. In one match recently, a player stewed when her opponent rolled a putt for practice after it was conceded, and ended up missing. But at that point, the damage was done: Like toothpaste out of the tube, a gimme can’t be undone.

The reason gimmes are so intriguing is because they involve a layer of ambiguity absent in other sports. Football teams don’t concede touchdowns when their opponents get down to the 1-yard line, but golf allows for judgments that can influence whole competitions—and potentially even more.

Consider handicaps. We give putts in matches, but we also aspire to keep an accurate handicap, and occasionally those two efforts intersect. If I’m in for 4 and you have a six-footer for 5, the hole is already decided as it relates to the competition, but what number are you entering when posting a score? The easiest way to remove any doubt is to just putt it, but if there’s a group with its hand on its hips in the fairway, you might need to get moving.

The guidance from the USGA is to post your “most likely score” based on your position when the hole was decided, which might sound like an invitation for sandbaggers and vanity handicappers to diverge. Yet even here, the system aspires to clear up any doubt. Rule 3.3 in the Rules of Handicapping—When a hole is started but does not hole out—says a player should add at least two strokes to anything outside five feet, which means your six-footer for 5 should really be counted as a 6. If the distance is more than 20 yards, “depending on the position of the ball, difficulty of the green, and the ability of the player,” it could even be a 7.

This all might seem like a lot of handwringing for a score that won’t even factor in a match, but remember, posting your handicap scores isn’t really about the golf you just played. It’s more about the golf still to come.