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The first factor when playing someone in a match and using your handicap is to determine every ones Golf Course Handicap. I started with a golf league because this is a simple way since your handicap in a golf league will be a golf course handicap. I will talk about how to create a golf course handicap later. So let us get back to the match and see how we use our handicap to determine who gets strokes, how many strokes, and on which holes they will receive the strokes.
For my example I will use 9 holes since this is fairly standard for most leagues. The 2 players we will call Dave and Maggie. Of course, these are fictional players. Maggie has a golf course handicap of 10 and Dave has a golf course handicap of 5. Since this is a 9 hole league, then the handicap is only a 9 hole handicap and would need to be doubled to play fairly on 18 holes. You take the higher handicap and subtract the lower handicap to receive the difference in handicaps. The difference in this example is 5 and Maggie will be receiving 5 strokes during the match. Now how will you determine which holes will Maggie receive the 5 strokes? The score card will always show the handicap for each hole. In the score card for the example, it only shows 9 holes, but this course is actually an 18 hole golf course. In this example, the score card calls the handicap, the Stroke Index. What this means is that the handicaps on each hole will be any number from 1 through 18, even though we are playing 9 holes. Each hole has the handicap and this is determined in an order from 1 to 18. 1 being the hardest hole and 18 being the easiest hole. For our example Maggie will receive 1 stroke on the 5 toughest holes on this 9. Maggie will receive 1 stroke on holes 1, 2, 5, 6, and 9. These are the 5 lowest handicap holes as indicated on the score card. What this means is that whatever score Maggie has on each of these holes, as far as the match is concerned, the score will be 1 lower than the actual score. In a league match there are normally points being won and lost on each hole and on the final match. So on the final match between Dave and Maggie, the score of Maggie will be reduced by 5 when comparing to Dave. This will be the determining factor on the scores of the match. As I mentioned earlier, you must have a Golf Course Handicap to play a match using your handicap for this to be done correctly. Your normal handicap is not a golf course handicap, but it is called your handicap index, which can be over multiple courses. A handicap at one course is not going to be the same at another course. So there is a method of taking your handicap and applying it to any golf course in the world. This method will produce your golf course handicap for you and who you will be playing. Here is the calculation to take your handicap and create the golf course handicap for you on the course you are about to be playing. Divide the slope of the course you are to play by 113 and multiply the result by your handicap. Using this formula we can now calculate a new golf course handicap for Dave and Maggie. The example above is from a local course here in Holland. Let us pretend that Dave and Maggie are playing at one of the courses in Ohio. Here are the numbers for the course here in Holland used in the example.
Course Rating : 68.2 Here are the numbers for the course in Ohio used in the example.
Course Rating : 75.1 We need to use the formula to calculate the golf course handicap for Dave and Maggie so we will be playing a fair match. Maggie 128/113 * 10 = 11.3 Dave 128/113 * 5 = 5.6 Here are the new handicaps for Dave and Maggie and these would be used to play on the course in Ohio.
Handicap Dave : 6 Sometimes the golf course you are about to play on will have a chart in the clubhouse that will show you what your new golf course handicap will be when playing on their course. I hope you now understand how to use your golf handicap when playing a match. The more you know about the game of golf, the more you can get from everything the game has to offer. I like to know the details when it comes to golf. Not only do I like to know as much as I can about golf, I feel this knowledge gives me an edge when playing the game.
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The Golf Course Handicap
