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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00:00WHS, 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
00:38works.
00:40Well, 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
00:55used to determine how many shots you get on a given course off a given set of tees. You
01:01will get more shots on harder courses and fewer shots on easier courses based on the slope rating,
01:07which is another term we'll come onto in a minute. In the transition from the old system
01:12to the new system, it will work out your best eight scores from 20 over a two-year period.
01:17Going forward, best eight out of a rolling 20, and it will average those out. For those who
01:22didn't have 20 scores in the system when the changeover came, it will pro-rata it on the
01:26number of scores available and work out a suitable number of those to use to create your average.
01:31So handicap index is what you're going to have going forward rather than a handicap.
01:41So from handicap index, we then come onto course handicap, which is what you'll actually get
01:45when you play a given course. It's a factor of your handicap index, the tees you choose to
01:50play from and the slope rating from those tees. You will actually from that then get a playing
01:56handicap depending on the format being played. For example, single stroke play events are
02:00going to be 95% of your course handicap. To calculate your course handicap, and you don't
02:06have to do this because this will all be done for you, you take the slope rating of the course,
02:11divide it by the 113 average and then multiply it by your handicap index. And that will give
02:18your course handicap for the set of tees you're choosing to play from. Essentially what you
02:23really need to know is that if a slope rating is above 113, you're likely to get more shots,
02:29depending how much above it it is. And if it's below 113, you're likely to get fewer shots
02:35than your handicap index. But that will depend on what your handicap index is and how much above
02:40or below that 113 average, the slope rating of the course you're playing that day is.
02:52Course rating is the figure that trained course assessors expect a scratch golfer to get round
02:58a 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 a driver and 230 with a fairway wood in normal
03:08playing conditions. For a lady, I think those figures are 210 and 170. So the course rating
03:15will sometimes be more than the par of the course, sometimes less than the par of the
03:19course. And that will depend on factors such as topography, fairway width, difficulty of
03:24holes, amount of out of bounds, factors that make one course harder than another. And course
03:29assessors take all of that into account. I suppose for those of us in the UK and Ireland,
03:34similar to the way in which standard scratch score often was different to the par of the
03:39course one way or the other by a shot or two.
03:47The 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
03:57a 24 handicap lady golfer. And they assume in the assessments there that a 20 handicap male
04:04golfer will hit it 200 with driver, 170 with a fairway wood. Obviously we all know people
04:08who vary massively one way or the other from that, but that's the average ladies. The figures
04:12are 150 and 130. And the idea here is this will assess how difficult the golf course is
04:18to get round for golfers in that handicap bracket. From there, we then go on to work out what the
04:24slope rating is.
04:30So now we come on to the crux of the whole system, the slope rating. And this uses course
04:35rating and bogey rating to assess the relative difficulty of a golf course for good players
04:40if you like and slightly less skilled players. Now these slope ratings vary from 55 for what
04:46would be a fairly easy course up to 155 for a very difficult golf course. 113 is the key
04:53figure. It's the average against which the difficulty level of a golf course is assessed. We'll come
04:58on to that a little bit more in a minute. The idea is that the harder a golf course is,
05:02the more strokes a higher handicapper might need to get round on an equal basis with a
05:07lower handicapper. The difficulty level kind of goes in a curve like that rather than like
05:11that. And if you want an example of what I mean by that, let's think about Augusta National.
05:17Tall pros are often asked how would an average 20 handicapper fare round here in the master
05:23set up and they'll say they wouldn't come remotely close to breaking 100, 110 even. Whereas
05:28that same 20 handicap could play round a relatively easy golf course in the early 90s. Now I've
05:33looked on the England golf website and it tells me that my handicap index is going to be 4.3.
05:39Now that means round this golf course here at the London club, we've done the maths, I would
05:43get 5.25, 5.3 shots. So I'd play off five if I played off the tips round here. If I played
05:51elsewhere or even harder golf course, let's say Carnoustie, Trump International off the
05:55back tees, the slope rating is going to be somewhere up in the 140s, maybe even 150. I
06:00suspect I would get six shots round there. But the difference is a higher handicap are going
06:05to a place like that. Let's say you're playing off 21 or 22. You might find when you get to
06:10Trump International and you decide to take it on off the back tees, wisely or unwisely, you
06:16might find you're getting 28 or 29 shots. I haven't done the precise maths, but the higher
06:21your handicap, the more shots you are likely to get over and above your handicap index than
06:26a lower handicapper. Conversely, of course, if the slope rating is lower, you're going
06:31to get fewer shots. Now, the good news is you don't have to do all this maths yourself.
06:36Clubs should be displaying course handicap information on notice boards, on perhaps big boards by the
06:42tee, hopefully on the website, so all the figures are there for you. All you have to do is cross-reference
06:47your handicap index against the slope rating of the tees you've chosen to play for on that
06:52day and you'll find out how many strokes you're entitled to for that given round.
06:58Okay, so that's the basics. Now, there's a few other little things that are going to have
07:06some bearing on how the whole thing works. One of those is the playing conditions calculation,
07:11TCC, and this is going to factor in other conditions on the day out on the golf course, weather, firmness
07:18or 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
07:32go down one, it can go up plus three. Those of us in the UK are kind of used to a similar
07:38thing with the competition scratch score, which mitigated against the course playing particularly
07:43easy or particularly hard on a given day. So that will still be there for those of us
07:47in the UK. It 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
08:00just need to talk about here. The first of those is the low handicap index. And this is an
08:06anchor point, which is the low point of your handicap over a 12-month period. And your
08:10handicap cannot rise by more than five shots from that. And I guess that's to mitigate
08:16possibly against foul play, I suppose, but more a really poor spell of form seeing your
08:21handicap go like that, which you would do under the new system more so than under the old system
08:26for those of us in the UK and Ireland where 20 bad rounds would see you go up two shots,
08:310.1 times 20. Twenty really poor rounds under the new system could, in theory, see your handicap
08:37rise massively. So there's going to be a limit of five. And there's also a couple of things
08:42called soft and hard caps. The soft cap, once your handicap has gone up by more than three
08:47from that LHI, low handicap index, anything above that between there and five only goes up
08:52by half what it would do under the normal calculation. So if it would have gone up to five, it only goes
08:58up to four. If it would have gone up to six, it only goes up to 4.5. And then there is the
09:02hard cap, which is that five, that absolute limit by which your handicap cannot go up by
09:07more 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
09:22measure that's going to be built into the system. And this is really to ensure that if you have
09:27an absolute blinder and you play a long way below your handicap index, your handicap index
09:34gets affected by more than it would do under the normal calculation. And the bar has been
09:38set at seven. If you have a score differential in a round, which is seven or more, so you play
09:43seven shots better than your handicap index, there will be an extra minus one set against
09:48your handicap index. And that will apply to all the 20 current counting score differentials,
09:54which means that over time it will gradually drop off, but at that particular moment you'll
09:58have an extra one shot taken off your handicap. Finally then, if you shoot ten under your handicap,
10:04handicap index, you're going to have a two-stroke additional reduction applied to your 20 current
10:10counting score differentials. And that's just to make sure that your handicap index reflects
10:16your current ability and that you don't therefore go and clean up in competitions because the normal
10:21calculation didn't give you a big enough reduction. And if it was just a freak once in a lifetime
10:26score, then gradually over the next few rounds it will work its way back out of your handicap
10:31index. So there we are. Those are what we think are the key terms you need to know about
10:35the World Handicap System. You can go into as much detail as you like elsewhere on the Home
10:39Union websites. But the key things you really need to know are handicap index and the slope rating
10:45of the course you're playing from the tees you're playing from that day. So what do you think
10:49of the World Handicap System, Handicap Index, do you know what yours is? Has it surprised
10:54you? Do you think the system is going to be better or worse than the old system for us
10:58in the UK and Ireland? Let us know your thoughts below. But for now, from a slightly wet and windy
11:03London club, it's goodbye.