Handicap

Noob wants to know how do I get a handicap and once I get one established how do I use it. Thanks in advance.

As an American you head to http://www.ghin.com/ and apply/subscribe.

Then, you post scores to ghin, and after 5 scores it generates a handicap index. This is the number you give folks when they ask your handicap.

However, there's also what's known as a course handicap - this is a mathematical permutation of your index. The formula is your index, divided by the slope of the tees you're playing, multiplied by 113. This is your course handicap. You use it to figure out how many strokes you get against the course.

This is for ESC (Equitable Stroke Control). I forget what the US breakdown is, but for sake of an argument for posting your score someone with a course handicap over 20 rounds all big scores down to quad bogey - so in other words, if you truly hacked up the course and shot, say, a 162 gross, by shooting 5 over par on every hole, you'd enter your score into the ghin computer (or at ghin.com) as 144. The lower your course handicap, the lower your maximum handicapping score is.

A lot of people get this confused, and figure that for scoring they're limited to what they can take. Wrong. If you take a 9 on a par 3, you shot a +6 for that hole. Sorry pal. Now, when you enter that score into the handicapping computer, you round that score down to a 7.

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Thanks for the link. I've been reading about it on the net. I think I got it. Hey, am I the only Yanky Doodle on here?

There's a few others but this is largely a Great Britian board (as well as those cast away by Brits and those still in the Commonwealth).

I was quite surprised when I discovered there are different methods for handicap calculation.

I thought it would be the same globally like the golf rules.