Big day for me on the golf course, I shot an 81 at Arrowhead! I drove the ball like a champ, and my putting was otherworldly. No three-putts, and I made at least three from over fifteen feet. Two birdies. And we saw some goslings on the course (bonus!).
I keep track of my progress using the USGA Handicap System. Its main purpose is to provide a pseudo-fair way for players of different abilities to compete against each other. It also provides a way of comparing scores shot at different courses or from different sets of tees. For each round, you do a little math and come up with a handicap differential. Prior to today, my best round was an 84 I shot in Michigan, which came out to a differential of 14.1. I shattered the record today with a differential of 9.6. Sweet.
Do It!
10 years ago
1 comment:
I made every effort to write a short response, but it's a bit too complicated for that!
Very roughly speaking, your handicap is how many strokes over par you shoot on your good days. Two players of unequal ability can compete on equal ground by using the handicap system. If a 15 handicapper played a 12 handicapper, the 15 handicapper would be given approximately a three-stroke advantage to even things out.
If you look at the scorecard next time you play you'll probably see a "course rating" and "slope rating" listed for each set of tees. This is how the handicap system takes course difficulty into consideration. The course rating gives the score that a scratch player (zero handicap) would shoot from those tees. The slope rating gives a measure of how much more difficult the course is for higher-handicap players. The differential is computed as:
diff = (score - course_rating)*(113/slope)
Your handicap is determined by taking the best ten of your last twenty differentials, averaging them, and multiplying the result by 0.96. I wrote a computer program to figure it out (you already assumed that, right?).
Anyhow, professionals don't have handicaps. But if they did, they would be in the vicinity of +5. The plus sign means on the other side of scratch. I've heard that Tiger would be something like +7. So, Tiger would have to give me around 25 strokes, depending on where we played.
If you start playing a lot this summer, you should hang on to the scorecards (which contain your score, the course rating, and the slope rating). Then when we play, we'll can use the handicap system to go head to head!
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golf_handicap
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