What Is a Golf Handicap and How Is It Calculated?
Golf is one of the few sports in the world where a beginner and an expert player can compete head-to-head in the same round, with a real chance of winning. That is not magic: it is the golf handicap, a system as elegant as it is precise that levels the playing field regardless of each player’s ability. If you have ever sat in front of a scorecard without fully understanding what those numbers mean, this guide is for you. What a golf handicap is and what it is for A golf handicap is a numerical index that represents a player’s skill level in relation to the standard difficulty of a course. The lower the handicap, the better the player. A scratch golfer, someone with a handicap of 0, is able to complete a round in the number of strokes the course sets as par. A player with a handicap of 18 will need, in theory, 18 strokes more than par to complete the round. But the purpose of the handicap goes far beyond being a simple identifying number. Its true value lies in enabling fair, b...