Golf Handicap Systems

For amateur competition play, golfers normally receive a golf handicap based on the last ten scores they received adjusted for the difficulty of the courses, in other words, the USGA Handicapping System. This works well for tournaments that attract amateurs who play often, but what about smaller tournaments for golfers who don’t play often enough […]

For amateur competition play, golfers normally receive a golf handicap based on the last ten scores they received adjusted for the difficulty of the courses, in other words, the USGA Handicapping System. This works well for tournaments that attract amateurs who play often, but what about smaller tournaments for golfers who don’t play often enough to be accurately handicapped in the usual way? There are several systems that address this question.

The Second Best System

The USGA has approved a system that is called the “Second Best Score System” or the “Second Best Handicap.” This doesn’t mean that the system is second best, but that the second best score sets the player’s golf handicap.

The player provides his three best scores from the last year in rounds played on regulation courses with a par of 68 or more. The committee combines them with any scores from previous tournaments and chooses the second best score minus 70 for men and 73 for women as the handicap for the current tournament.

For new players who can only provide a single score, the system subtracts 74 strokes for a man and 77 for a woman to get the golf handicap. In any case, a score for a 9-hole round is doubled first.

The Peoria System

A golf handicap doesn’t have to be set prior to the tournament. Using the Peoria System means giving the players their handicaps according to the way they play during the tournament. The committee secretly selects six holes before the playing begins.

There is a par-3, par-4 and par-5 hole each from the front and back nine holes. After the round is played, the golfer’s over par strokes (up to three on the par-3s and par-4s and 4 on the par-5s) on those six holes are multiplied by 2.8. The result is subtracted from the round’s total as the handicap.

The Callaway System

The Callaway system is a worst holes system that works according to a chart. The golfer plays one round and compares score to the chart. If his score is 70 or above, he will receive a deduction based on the worst score in the round and/ or a set adjustment.

Depending on how many strokes he made, a player may be given a golf handicap of half the number of strokes on his worst hole to the total of the six worst holes plus the adjustment of -2 to +2 to a maximum of 50 strokes. The chart makes this much simpler than it sounds and since this system is based on a game that all players played in the same weather conditions, it works out very fairly.

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