Golf Digest senior writer Alex Myers is on a one-year mission to see how good he can get at golf through daily training, practice and playing. Read more from his “Late Scratch?” series here.
No matter your golf goals and no matter your skill level, there’s no reason not to have a Handicap Index. It’s the best way to track your progress while also allowing you to play competitive matches against all types of players.
And it’s the baseline I’ve used for the past year while trying this whole “Late Scratch?” experiment as I’ve watched my Handicap Index go down (Yay!) before seeing it creep back up (Sigh). While I haven’t necessarily become a better golfer, I have become more of an expert on this metric, which I've been tracking on the USGA's updated GHIN mobile app.
Most golfers understand the basic function of the World Handicap System, but fail to grasp the details of how it actually works. To that end, let’s run down some of the most common things people get wrong.
Your disaster holes aren’t as bad as you think
This is one that a lot of people get wrong in part because the maximum score you can take on any one hole used to be more confusing. But as of 2020 under the World Handicap System, net double bogey became the max no matter your Handicap Index. To figure out the highest score you can take on a hole, you first have to convert your Handicap Index into a Course Index for that day. So if you’re getting six strokes and it’s one of the six hardest holes, you can take a gross triple bogey, which converts to a net double bogey. If it’s the No. 7 handicap hole or higher, you can only take a gross double bogey—which would also be a net double bogey in that situation—no matter what score you made. This Equitable Stroke Control is in effect so that one hole doesn’t completely wreck your score. And so that sandbaggers can't artificially inflate their Handicap Indexes.
Your disaster rounds aren’t as bad as you think
The World Handicap System is meant to reflect a golfer’s potential, which is why only the eight best rounds—by Score Differential, which is automatically calculated on the GHIN app using course rating and slope rating—out of a golfer’s past 20 count toward a Handicap Index. So, once you shoot something that isn’t going to be in that top eight, it doesn’t matter how much worse your score winds up being. That round won’t drag down your Handicap Index because it will be one of the 12 rounds that isn’t factored into it. Both this and the max score rule should make establishing a Handicap Index even more inviting for beginning golfers. Players of all levels can—and should—have one.
Your Handicap Index doesn’t always change
It’s great that the World Handicap System updates on a daily basis now, but that doesn’t mean your Handicap Index will constantly change. I see people confused all the time when they input a good or bad score and their number doesn’t budge. Again, it’s an average of your eight best Score Differentials out of your past 20 rounds. So the majority of your rounds actually don’t affect your Handicap Index.
Your Handicap Index isn’t tied to your last round
Similarly, your Handicap Index isn’t necessarily going to change in the direction of your latest score. I often hear people remark, “How did I go down when I just posted a bad score?!” Well, because the score you’re knocking off your card is just as important as the one you’re adding. In fact, you could post a great score, but if you’re knocking off an even better score from the past 20, then your Handicap Index might actually go up.
You don’t have to play full rounds
First, I should clarify that you don’t need to play 20 rounds to establish a Handicap Index. You’ll have one after entering as few as 54 holes. But that brings us to our next point, which is that you don’t have to play an 18-hole round to enter a score. As long as you play at least nine holes, you can enter that score for your Handicap Index. And no matter how many holes you play between 9 and 18, just enter the score for each hole that you played, and the World Handicap System will calculate a Score Differential for the round. It might look odd to someone taking a quick glance at your scores, but it allows golfers to post more scores and have a Handicap Index that better reflects how they’re playing at the time.
Your Score Differentials aren’t always final
There’s a chance that Score Differential will change by the time you check the next day when it—and your new Handicap Index—becomes official. That’s because after all the scores are recorded for the day at a certain course, a PCC or Playing Conditions Calculation is sometimes applied based on whether a course played particularly easy or hard that day. This adjustment ranges from -1 if a course played easier to +3 if it played harder. If the latter is the case, you will get more credit for how well you played and your Score Differential will be adjusted lower, thus, potentially bringing your Handicap Index down as well. And if you're confused by any of this, don't be. It's all kept track of by the GHIN app, which the USGA recently upgraded.
Tournament scores don’t count more
You’ve probably noticed that when you enter a score you can put it in as “Home,” “Away” or “Competition” under score type. However, all those categories are weighted the same. That seems to be common knowledge for the home or away scores, but many are under the wrong impression that competition scores count more. Oh, and one other thing I found out this year with competition scores is that the tournament often enters these scores for you. So entering on your own will cause a duplicate entry. It happened to me earlier this year, but I reached out to someone with my local golf association and they quickly corrected my error.
So, there you have it when it comes to how a Handicap Index works. Unfortunately, knowing these things won’t help lower yours, but at least now you’ll understand why it’s moving—or, not moving.