Do you know your Golf Handicap?

Jul 16 2008

Published by Mike at 12:57 pm under Beginners, Miscellaneous

Phil Mickelson misses putt One of the great mysteries in sports is how a player’s golf handicap is calculated. I don’t know how it’s done, and to be honest, I don’t really want to know how it’s done. I know it has a lot to do with numbers, and I’m not good with numbers. I’m a history major. The only numbers I need to know are years.

But, I think it is interesting to know your handicap as a golfer. It shows how much worse than par a player should be able to play. For your handicap to be accurate, you have to play a lot of golf. To establish a USGA Handicap Index, the lowest 10 rounds out of your last 20 are figured into the calculation, but you can start after just 5 rounds.

You’re also supposed to calculate it at a golf course that is sanctioned by the USGA to calculate your handicap, which means you can only use scores from that course. But what if you play at a bunch of different courses, like Kevin and I do? Well, I have your answer…Yahoo!

The Yahoo! Sports Golf Handicap Tracker is awesome, and it can start calculating your handicap after a single round of golf. Just save your scorecard after every round and enter your scores into the handicap tracker. You can search for the course that you played at in Yahoo!’s course database. If it’s not in the database you can enter the course information yourself.

It’s very easy to use, and it’s great to see how close you are to becoming a scratch golfer with a zero handicap. If you’re having trouble getting your handicap index to move down, you might want to consider a little tip we have for the less-experienced golfer. Take a look.

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Technorati Tags: golf, Golf Handicap, Scratch Golfer, Usga Handicap Index, Yahoo, Yahoo Sports Golf Handicap Tracker

One response so far

One Response to “Do you know your Golf Handicap?”

# One-Eyed Golferon 06 Jul 2009 at 8:23 am

I am on a one man campaign to eliminate the question, “What is your handicap”? from golf jargon. It no longer has relevance.

“What is your index”? You do not know your handicap until you actually go to the course you are going to play that day, look at the sheet and determine the tees you are going to play from. If a guy thinks he is slick and says, “I am a 10 handicap at my course”, I ask from which tee boxes – front, middle, back, tips? Because it might be different on every single tee box…

I am not a jerk in every aspect of golf, just a few…