Know The Score - Introduction to the World Handicap System (WHS)
England Golf is introducing a new handicapping system later in the year and in an attempt to explain how it is going to work, they are running an advertising campaign called ‘Know the Score’ in the lead up, so you will be seeing some information posters etc around the club as part of this campaign.
All clubs will all be switching over to the new World Handicapping System or WHS on November 2nd, it will replace the current CONGU handicapping system. It will be part of a system used by over 15 million golfers in 80 countries worldwide.
The aim is to give everyone a new handicap that is adjusted to a global average, thus enabling players from clubs of varying difficulty to meet and play on an equal footing.
Although they are claiming it will make handicapping easier to understand, I’m not sure they have achieved this and the new ‘handicap index’ as they are calling it and how it is calculated is quite difficult to understand. I won’t try and explain all the minutiae now, but just give a simple introduction.
Instead of having a ‘handicap’ you will have a ‘handicap index’ this will be calculated by taking the average of your best 8 rounds from your most recent 20. This in itself won’t change things very much. But it will also take into consideration the “difficulty” of the course on which you played your round.
Over the past few years teams of course inspectors from England Golf have been visiting all the clubs in the country and assessing them for ‘difficulty’. This is expressed in two ways:
“Course Rating” which replaces the old “Standard Scratch” it is an assessment of what score a scratch golfer should go round in. For example the new course rating for the Ladies playing off the red tees at Muswell Hill Golf Club is 74.4 i.e. 0.4 harder than the existing standard scratch.
“Slope Rating” which is an expression of how much more difficult the course is for an 18 handicapper. The ladies red tees at Muswell Hill Golf Club have been given a slope rating of 133, considerably more difficult than the WHS average rating of 113.
So if, for example, a woman went round Muswell Hill Golf Club in 94, 8 times in a row (assuming the CSS of 74 didn’t change each time) under the old system she would have a handicap of 20 (94-74). Her new ‘handicap index’ would be calculated by taking her score difference 94 – 74.4 = 19.6 and then adjusting it to the WHS average by multiplying it by 113/133 which would give us 19.6 x 0.85 = 16.6. Don’t worry the computer will be doing all the maths for you.
So you can see that because Muswell Hill Golf Club is considered much more difficult than average, we are all actually much better players that our existing handicaps would suggest and we will all have a lower ‘handicap index’ than our existing CONGU handicap.
But don’t FREAK OUT, this doesn’t mean that we will all have to start playing off these ridiculously low handicaps. Every time you play on any course in the world you will need to look up its course handicap table. This will tell you what the slope rating or difficulty of the course off each of the tees is and how you adjust your handicap index to find your “Playing Handicap” for that round. So all the Ladies playing at Muswell Hill Golf Club will be adjusting the handicap index by 133/113 or 1.18 giving our shocked 16.6 handicapper a “Playing Handicap” of 20 again (Phew!)
Whenever you go out to play on a course (including your rounds at Muswell Hill Golf Club) you will need to look up your ‘playing handicap’ for that course. Some of you will have seen course handicap tables similar to this, if you have played abroad. Below is actually the table for Muswell Hill, which will be going up on the wall of the clubhouse near the first tee. Scorecard sized versions will also be available.
England Golf will hold all player records on its new national database. It has been updating this with all the round history for every player at every club for the past 2 years. From 2nd August you will be able to log on to this system and start monitoring how your new handicap index compares to your old handicap. They are encouraging you to get as many cards in before November that you can, so that your new index is a fair reflection of your play. And moving forward they will allow and encourage you to submit cards whenever and wherever you play a social round (with certain limitations) similar to a supplementary card. Don’t worry if you haven’t played 20 rounds in the last 2 years, there is a sliding scale that allows them to calculate you handicap index from as little as 3 scores.
That’s probably enough for now, but there are a few more nuances that need to be explained. Watch out for another exciting episode of ‘Know the Score’ coming your way soon.
If anyone would like to have the WHS system explained in more detail then I will be running a workshop on the terrace on Sunday 2nd August and Sunday 16th August, between 3pm and 5pm and then more in the months leading up to November.
Tim Jones
Chair of Competitions
