On Course....... with Tom Casady - The Handicap, Day 1

Tom Casady, Edmond, OK (June 11, 2010)  I presently have in my possession a book of 149 pages. It is titled, “The USGA Handicap System”. I thought when I started reading this tomb that it was impossible to have very much to say about a simple number. I found out soon how wrong I was, again!

In the late 1970's, I was a founding member of the Bay Area Master's Golf Club, an associate golf club belonging to the Northern California Golf Association, located on the east side of the San Francisco Bay Area. One of my functions was handicaps, so I went to a class sponsored by the NCGA to learn how to use the handicap system. During the next 10 years, the new, Handicap Index system was coming into use throughout the United States, starting out with a new slope rating for courses and evolving into what we have today. And what took maybe 10 pages of instructions then, now is a book full of charts, rules and formulas. I hope I can help you understand some of it over a series of articles I have titled, “The Handicap, Day (#)”.


For this first article, I just want to remind everyone about “Equitable Stroke Control” (ESC). Located in the book mentioned above, Section 4-3 states: “All scores for handicap purposes, including tournament scores, are subject to Equitable Stroke Control (ESC). That means, for entering your scores for handicap purposes, you need to adjust the score on each applicable hole according to the ESC chart below. (This is done for you by the Oklahoma GC AM Tour committee for each Oklahoma GC AM Tour event, If you don't use your Players Club Account to post scores on a hole by hold basis you must calculate it yourselves every time you post a score.)

  Course                           Max Number
Handicap                          on any Hole
-----------------------------------------
9 or less                          Double Bogey
10 thru 19                                7
20 thru 29                                8
30 thru 39                                9
40 or more                              10

The important thing to remember are the words “Course Handicap”. Your Course Handicap changes on every course that you play, so you have to be aware of your course handicap every time you play. There are two easy ways to know what your Course Handicap for a given course is: go into the pro shop, find the chart that converts your “Handicap Index” to the Course Handicap based upon the Slope of the tees from which you are about to play; or get out a calculator (use the one on your phone) and use the following formula found in Section 10-4 of the a fore mentioned book. (Your Handicap Index multiplied by the Slope Rating of the tees from which you are about to play) divided by 113. Round this number to the nearest whole number (anything from .5 and greater is rounded up).

Every time you play a round, your score must be posted using ESC which will establish your correct handicap index. Why is this important to the GC AM Tour and to you? A correct handicap index provides “a fair Course Handicap for each player, regardless of ability” (Section 1:1. Purpose). And the GC AM Tour wants to provide a fair competition for every player, in every flight, so that we all have the fairest chance to bring home the trophy.

. . . . On Course to save you strokes!

Tom Casady is the Oklahoma Tour Handicap Chairman, a member of the Tournament Committee and is a partner with Scott Chilcutt and Loyd Welch in the operation of the Oklahoma Tour. Tom can be reached @ TC3ofCnC@aol.com.