What's Your Handicap?
Shortly after the very beginning of time, I mean golf, the United States Golf Association (USGA) decided that golfers of different abilities should not be unequally yoked.
Players with higher skill levels and more upper body strength always won due to their unfair advantage. Thus, the “handicap” system was introduced to the wide world of golf.
How It Works
Although it is commonly believed that a handicap is a player’s average score, the actual purpose of a handicap is to show each player’s potential. Handicaps level the playing field between any two golfers, allowing them to play to the best of their ability and then compare their net score based on the actual number of strokes taken. Players with less skill are allowed to subtract a stroke on certain holes, usually with lower pars.
How is this important to women golfers? Well, due to Mother Nature’s interesting sense of humor, men almost always have more brute upper body strength than women. Since the golf swing is derived almost entirely from that source, to say that men have an unfair advantage would be sorely understating the matter.
To compensate for this, most courses have a “forward tee” from which women are allowed to take their first stroke. However, the unfortunate truth that surrounds this seemingly genteel gesture is that the forward tees are frequently not forward enough to make a difference. Hence, the significance of handicaps for women.
Handicaps are determined by a surprisingly complex mathematical formula that we won’t go into here because your golf association or an online tracker can tell you your handicap with the scores from as few as five games. Additionally, in the early 80’s, the USGA introduced formulas for course and slope ratings applicable to every golf course, which has had a significant impact on the effectiveness of the handicap system. To obtain these ratings, each and every tee is studied in minute detail, focusing on things in the ten following categories:
- Topography
- Ease or difficulty of hitting the fairway
- Probability of hitting the green from the fairway landing area
- Difficulty of bunkers (hazards)
- Probability of hitting into bunkers
- Probability of hitting out of bounds
- How much water will come into play
- How trees affect play
- Speed and contouring of the greens
- Psychological effect of all of the above
Once this extensive research has been completed, the USGA utilize a relatively dramatic algebraic modus operandi (see “surprisingly complex mathematical formula” above) to produce a total of eight ratings per course. One slope rating and one course rating is calculated each for a female scratch golfer, a male scratch golfer, a female bogey golfer, and a male bogey golfer.
After all of the calculations, the bottom line is this: you need never be intimidated because someone else (male or female) is a better golf player. All you need to do is get a handicap rating to place yourself on an even par with everyone else. To do that, we highly recommend:
