What makes the game interesting, is the that anyone at any time is capabible of greatness. Who is better at being great can be measured, over a period of time, using a sequence of events...from the single stroke, to a single hole, to an 18 hole round, and over a multi day span.

When people try to guage themselves against others in terms of this greatness level you invariably get those that want to be seen at their best, and those that want to be preceived as the best. These are very different.

Using a leveler like a handicap invalidates completly the common sense approach to this guage. Who is the "best"? Who is better then the other? Keeping a handicap is a way to guage your own personal level. Using it as this "best guage" in my option a waste of everyone's time. Playing for money or stature within a club/county tournament is always riddled with issues over this system.

The solution (as many tournaments do) is to make flights of entry. Make the handicap a marker that you know where you should compete. Play within that group for tournament status, and winners are moved up one level to the next...infact that should be the goal...to be "promoted" based on your abilities. This makes keeping a handicap very personally lugit because who wants to keep loosing in the higher ranked tournaments?

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I'm a golfaholic, no question about that. Counseling wouldn't help me. They'd have to put me in prison, and then I'd talk the warden into building a hole or two and teach him how to play. ~Lee Trevino