My handicap

[Lee73]

Hi all, I’m relatively new to golf (been playing about 5-6 months ) I joined a club and handed my final handicap card in on Saturday and I’ve just looked and got my first ever handicap , so my question is how is a handicap worked out because I thought it was worked out from your best score but my best score was 106 (I know it’s rubbish but gives me something to work on) and my handicap is 27!? I thought the max for a male is 28 and really expected it to be 28.

Many thanks.

 

[Hobbit]

Its done from the 3 cards, not your best card/score. Its years since I've done one, and others more current will be able to answer you better. One of the things that springs to mind is anything over a double bogey is counted as a double bogey, but I may be wrong.

 

[NorwichBanana]

Males can now have a handicap of 54 I believe?

The worst score you can get on any hole is a nett double bogey. So if you had a few 9's on par 4's these will be counted down as far as im aware - which may be a reason as to why you've been given 27.

 

[Orikoru]

They do take it from your best card, but anything higher than nett double bogey gets rounded down, so if you scored a 9 on a par 4 in that 106, it may only count as a 7, say. They also might go a shot lower than you expect anyway just to protect against people coming in and shooting 40 points straight away. When I joined my club two years ago I was expecting 27 and got 24.

P.S. As Banana says, 28 is no longer the maximum, it can go all the way up to 54.

 

[Lee73]

Ok thanks for all the replies....appreaciate it

 

[rosecott]

It's no longer net double bogey for the adjustment prior to applying the equation. Any score higher than double the par on any hole is adjusted down to double par.

 

[jim8flog]

The highest handicap is 54 and not 28.

 

[duncan mackie]

So, in summary...

Each card is individually adjusted for any hole score greater than 2 x par.
The best resulant card is then selected and the score from that card compared to the SSS of the course and tees it was played from (if they were played from different ones this would have to be done for each to establish the best card...)
The difference is then multiplied by a factor (in the region of 90%) to give the initial handicap allocation.

 

[rulefan]

The system proposes the initial allocation but this can be overridden if appropriate (eg previous playing history/experience)