How to Determine Your Golf Handicap

Your golf handicap is calculated with a formula that averages how a player should be able to play better than par.

There are two slightly different ways to calculate your handicap which I detail below.

A wide spread belief amongst golfers is that a player's handicap is their average score, when in fact your golf handicap is only the potential of your game. Most golfers play their handicap 25% of the time which is know as playing your "average best". So in a large, handicapped competition, the golfer who shoots the best with respect to his or her abilities and the normal variations of the score should win.

While there are many variations, handicap systems are generally based on calculating an individual player's playing ability from his or her recent history of rounds. Therefore, a handicap is not fixed but is regularly adjusted to increases or decreases in a player's scoring.

A golfer whose handicap is zero is called a "scratch golfer." A golfer whose handicap is 20 is called a "bogey golfer." It is possible to have a handicap below 0; these are referred to as 'plus' handicaps, and at the end of the round, a 'plus' handicap golfer must add his handicap to his score. A professional golfer plays off scratch, but has no actual handicap.

In the United States, handicaps are calculated using the player's most recent game scores, along with the course ratings and slopes from the courses played.

Here's how to calculate your golf handicap.

Step 1. Take the scores from the last five rounds (18 holes each) that you played.

Step 2. Get the rating and slope for each course that you played for each of these five scores. You can find this information on the the course's scorecard.

Step 3. Now subtract the course rating from the score you earned on that course.

Step 4. Then multiply that number by 113.

Step 5. Then simply divide that number by the slope of the course. This number is known as your differential.

Step 6. And last... Take the lowest of your five differentials and multiply it by 0.96, and you'll have your handicap!

Now as you may have figured out from the above, recalculating your handicap every time you play can be time-consuming and annoying. So you may want to look up some great Golf Handicap Tracker software packages that can do all the leg work for you in one single swoop.

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By PJ Powers