How Can I Get A Golf Handicap?

How To Get A Golf Handicap

To many, golfers and non golfers alike, the possession of a golf handicap is a sign that you are a ‘proper’ golfer. As golfers know, a frequent response when someone learns that you are a golfer is to ask ‘what is your handicap?’ One of the questions often of asked by those new to the game is ‘how do I get a handicap?’

Getting a handicap has become easier. Once upon a time you had to be a member of a golf club to get one, and these were awarded, and administered, by the golf club’s handicap committee. This is still the way the majority of golfers have their handicap, however in many countries golfers without a club membership are now also able to get, and maintain, a handicap.

For example, England Golf, the governing body of the amateur game in England, have the iGolf scheme, whereby for an annual subscription, golfers can obtain and maintain an up-to-date official handicap index; Scottish Golf have OpenPlay and in the US you can join an online golf club.

In 2020 a new system of handicapping was introduced, the World Handicap System. This was to bring about a single system of handicaps in place of six different concurrent ones previously in operation, and the WHS has been adopted by 80 countries.

This also opened up new ways of getting a handicap, or technically now a handicap index. (Instead of having a handicap, players now get awarded a handicap index. The idea behind this is the highly sensible one that not all courses are of equal difficulty, even courses with the same par, so ‘one size fits all’ policy didn’t actually fit a lot of courses. Now golfers have a handicap index, and this index is then translated into what is now known as a course handicap at each course based upon that course’s difficulty.)

But, back to ways of getting a handicap. It used to be that your rounds normally didn’t count unless they were of 18 holes and played in an official competition. But now players can submit 9-hole rounds for handicap purposes. Also they can submit what are called general play scores, which are rounds not played in an official competition. The WHS handicap index is based upon the average of a players best 8 scores in their past 20 rounds. But to get a WHS handicap index in the first place only scores for 54 holes (which can be any combination of 9- or 18-hole rounds) have to submitted.