- 7 hours ago
In this video, Golf Monthly's Jezz Ellwood takes a detailed look at the world handicap system. He picks out the 8 most important things that every golfer needs to know. From handicap indexes to slope rating and exceptional score reductions, this video will walk you through the terms and explain how they might affect your game. What do you think of the new world handicap system?
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00:05WHS, the World Handicap System, it's here. We're all now going to be playing by the same
00:10set of handicap regulations wherever we play golf in the world. In the UK and Ireland,
00:15for example, we've been used to terms like competition scratch score, standard scratch
00:19score, buffer zones, 0.1 increases for a long time. Those have all gone. There's a whole
00:25new set of terms to get your head around to understand how this slope-based system is
00:29going to work. In this video, we're going to pick out eight of what we think are the
00:33key terms to get your head around so you get a better understanding of how the new system works.
00:44Well, the most important term, I think, is handicap index because this is what we all have now,
00:50rather than a handicap as such. There is a key difference here because the index is then used
00:55to determine how many shots you get on a given course off a given set of tees. You'll get more
01:02shots on harder courses and fewer shots on easier courses based on the slope rating, which is another
01:07term we'll come onto in a minute. In the transition from the old system to the new system, it will
01:13work
01:13out your best eight scores from 20 over a two-year period. Going forward, best eight out of a rolling
01:1920, and it will average those out. And for those who didn't have 20 scores in the system when the
01:23changeover came, it will pro-rata it on the number of scores available and work out a suitable number
01:29of those to use to create your average. So handicap index is what you're going to have going forward,
01:33rather than a handicap.
01:41So from handicap index, we then come onto course handicap, which is what you'll actually get when
01:45you play a given course and it's a factor of your handicap index, the tees you choose to play from
01:51and the slope rating from those tees. You will actually from that then get a playing handicap, depending
01:56on the format being played. For example, single stroke play events are going to be 95% of your course
02:03handicap. To calculate your course handicap, and you don't have to do this because this will all be done
02:07for you, you take the slope rating of the course, divide it by the 113 average and then multiply
02:15it by your handicap index. And that will give you your course handicap for the set of tees you're
02:21choosing to play from. Essentially, what you really need to know is that if a slope rating
02:25is above 113, you're likely to get more shots, depending how much above it it is. And if it's
02:32below 113, you're likely to get fewer shots than your handicap index. But that will depend on what your
02:38handicap index is and how much above or below that 113 average the slope rating of the course you're
02:43playing that day is.
02:51Course rating is the figure that trained course assessors expect a scratch golfer to get round
02:57a golf course in. And for the purposes of their calculations, they assume a scratch golfer is
03:03someone who can hit it 250 off the tee with the driver and 230 with a fairway wood in normal
03:08playing
03:09conditions. For a lady, I think those figures are 210 and 170. So the course rating will sometimes be
03:16more than the par of the course, sometimes less than the par of the course. And that will depend
03:20on factors such as topography, fairway width, difficulty of holes, amount of out of bounds,
03:26factors that make one course harder than another. And course assessors take all of that into account.
03:32I suppose for those of us in the UK and Ireland, it's similar to the way in which
03:35standard scratch score often was different to the par of the course one way or the other by a shot
03:41or two.
03:46The final piece of the jigsaw then to allow us to get the slope rating is the bogey rating.
03:51And this is effectively the same as the course rating, but for a 20 handicap male golfer or 24 handicap
03:58lady golfer. And they assume in the assessments there that a 20 handicap male golfer will hit it
04:04200 with driver, 170 with a fairway wood. Obviously, we all know people who vary massively one way or
04:09the other from that, but that's the average ladies. The figures are 150 and 130. And the idea here is
04:16this will assess how difficult the golf course is to get round for golfers in that handicap bracket.
04:21From there, we then go on to work out what the slope rating is.
04:30So now we come onto the crux of the whole system, the slope rating. And this uses course rating and
04:35bogey rating to assess the relative difficulty of a golf course for good players, if you like,
04:41and slightly less skilled players. Now, these slope ratings vary from 55 for what would be a fairly
04:47easy course, up to 155 for a very difficult golf course. 113 is the key figure. It's the average
04:54against which the difficulty level of a golf course is assessed. We'll come onto that a little bit more
04:59in a minute. The idea is that the harder a golf course is, the more strokes a higher handicapper
05:04might need to get round on an equal basis with a lower handicapper. The difficulty level kind of goes in
05:09a curve like that rather than like that. And if you want an example of what I mean by that,
05:14let's think about Augusta National. Tall pros are often asked how would an average 20 handicapper
05:21fare round here in the master setup. And they'll say they wouldn't come remotely close to breaking
05:26100, 110 even. Whereas that same 20 handicapper could play around a relatively easy golf course
05:31in the early 90s. Now, I've looked on the England golf website and it tells me that my handicap index
05:36is going to be 4.3. Now, that means around this golf course here at the London club, we've done
05:42the maths,
05:42I would get 5.25, 5.3 shots. So I'd play off five if I played off the tips round
05:49here. If I played
05:51elsewhere or even harder golf course, let's say, Carnoustie, Trump International off the back tees,
05:56the slope rating is going to be somewhere up in the 140s, maybe even 150. I suspect I would get
06:01six
06:02shots round there. But the difference is a higher handicap are going to a place like that. Let's say
06:06you're playing off 21 or 22. You might find when you get to Trump International and you decide to
06:12take it on off the back tees, wisely or unwisely, you might find you're getting 28 or 29 shots. I
06:19haven't done the precise maths, but the higher your handicap, the more shots you are likely to get
06:24over and above your handicap index than a lower handicapper. Conversely, of course, if the slope
06:29rating is lower, you're going to get fewer shots. Now, the good news is you don't have to do all
06:34this maths yourself. Clubs should be displaying course handicap information on notice boards,
06:40on perhaps big boards by the tee, hopefully on the website. So all the figures are there for you.
06:45All you have to do is cross-reference your handicap index against the slope rating of the tees you've
06:51chosen to play for on that day and you'll find out how many strokes you're entitled to for that given
06:56round.
07:02Okay, so that's the basics. Now, there's a few other little things that are going to have some
07:06bearing on how the whole thing works. One of those is the playing conditions calculation, PCC.
07:11And this is going to factor in other conditions on the day out on the golf course, weather,
07:17firmness or fairways or whatever, that either make the course particularly easy or particularly hard.
07:22And it's going to factor that into the handicap calculations for that day based on anyone out
07:27on the course that day playing in a competition or putting in a card for handicap. And it can go
07:32down one, it can go up plus three. Those of us in the UK are kind of used to a
07:37similar thing with
07:38the competition scratch score, which mitigated against the course playing particularly easy
07:43or particularly hard on a given day. So that will still be there for those of us in the UK.
07:48It may be new to people elsewhere in the world.
07:57Finally, then, there's a couple of what you might term safeguards in the system, which we just need to
08:01talk about here. The first of those is the low handicap index. And this is an anchor point,
08:06which is the low point of your handicap over a 12-month period. And your handicap cannot rise
08:11by more than five shots from that. And I guess that's to mitigate possibly against foul play,
08:17I suppose, but more a really poor spell of form seeing your handicap go like that,
08:22which you would do under the new system more so than under the old system for those of us in
08:26the UK
08:27and Ireland where 20 bad rounds would see you go up two shots, 0.1 times 20. 20 really poor
08:34rounds under the
08:34new system could, in theory, see your handicap rise massively. So there's going to be a limit of
08:40five. And there's also a couple of things called soft and hard caps. The soft cap, once your handicap
08:46has gone up by more than three from that LHI, low handicap index, anything above that between there and
08:51five only goes up by half what it would do under the normal calculation. So if it would have gone
08:56up
08:57to five, it only goes up to four. If it would have gone up to six, it only goes up
09:00to 4.5. And then
09:02there is the hard cap, which is that five, that absolute limit by which your handicap cannot go
09:07up by more than that over the course of a 12-month period.
09:17Finally, then, we have a safeguard the other way, if you like, by the exceptional score reduction measure
09:23that's going to be built into the system. And this is really to ensure that if you have an absolute
09:28blinder and you play a long way below your handicap index, your handicap index gets affected by more
09:35than it would do under the normal calculation. And the bar has been set at seven. If you have a
09:39score
09:39differential in a round, which is seven or more, so you play seven shots better than your handicap index,
09:46there will be an extra minus one set against your handicap index. And that will apply to all the
09:5020 current counting score differentials, which means that over time, it will gradually drop off.
09:57But at that particular moment, you'll have an extra one shot taken off your handicap. Finally, then,
10:02if you shoot 10 under your handicap index, you're going to have a two-stroke additional reduction
10:08applied to your 20 current counting score differentials. And that's just to make sure that
10:14your handicap index reflects your current ability and that you don't therefore go and clean up in
10:19competitions because the normal calculation didn't give you a big enough reduction. And if it was just
10:24a freak once in a lifetime score, then gradually over the next few rounds, it will work its way back
10:30out of your handicap index. So there we are. Those are what we think are the key terms you need
10:34to know
10:35about the World Handicap System. You can go into as much detail as you like elsewhere on the Home Union
10:39websites. But the key things you really need to know are handicap index and the slope rating of the
10:45course you're playing from the tees you're playing from that day. So what do you think of the World
10:50Handicap System, Handicap Index? Do you know what yours is? Has it surprised you? Do you think the
10:55system is going to be better or worse than the old system for us in the UK and Ireland? Let
10:59us know
10:59your thoughts below. But for now, from a slightly wet and windy London club, it's goodbye.
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