Some, or perhaps most, golfers will have heard someone at some stage say, “Oh, watch out for him – his handicap travels well,” or, “That will be a tough match to win – their handicaps travel well from that club.”
And most of us understand the implication that their home club is more difficult than other courses and their golf handicaps are higher than they would be if they played elsewhere, so when they do play elsewhere, they find it easy to play to handicap or better.
However, if the handicap system in place – whether WHS or the old Standard Scratch Score – is doing its job properly, that should never be the case. Why? Because these systems are supposed to be designed for parity, both among different courses and clubs and between all the different sets of tee markers at your home club.
This, of course, is an immensely tall order because all courses are widely different, with their own particular nuances, challenges and conditions. But all that is supposed to be factored in via slope rating and course rating under WHS, such that if your index is 7.3 at your home club, as mine currently is, that handicap should be fair for you wherever you play, and from whatever set of tees you play.
In an ideal world, handicaps should travel fairly from one course to another
(Image credit: Kenny Smith)
However, I’m not sure it works 100% or even close to that, if I’m honest. I’ve written before about my desire to play as much golf from the back tees as possible because, on the face of it at least, I feel I have more chance of playing to handicap with the extra shots that gives me, despite the added difficulty those extra shots are supposed to reflect.
And we will all have played courses where the slope and/or course rating don’t seem to reflect how difficult or otherwise we perceive that course to be.
At my home club of Royal Ashdown Forest, I get seven shots off the yellows and ten off the whites, mainly as a result of nearly two shots difference in the course ratings. I’ll probably fall flat on my face and shoot hundreds next time I play off the whites, but certainly in the summer when there’s plenty of run, I genuinely don’t feel it is three shots harder.
Similarly, if I were to go forward to the reds, I would only get three shots. I have…
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