Reply To: Handicap question

[Jeff M. – World Am]

David,

A handicap is about your potential, it is not an average of your scores. The USGA system does not use 50% of your scores until you reach 20 in your score history. The fewer scores you have, the fewer differentials they use to calculate your index. By using the USGA standard for this, we should technically only use your lowest single differential from last year if you only played 3 rounds. However, we made the decision to stick with average of the lowest two differentials for the World Am index.

It is important to remember that we are not penalizing players for playing well. We are simply using all of the relevant information at hand to assign an index to each player that most accurately reflects their recent, ultimate playing potential for our golf tournament.

Also, the only way the World Am index comes into play is if you have two differentials (in 3 days) that average out to lower than your lowest index in the last 12 months. That is not something that will affect a large number of people. If you continually have to play to a World Am index, it may mean that your actual USGA handicap index is inaccurate.

We’ll miss you at Calabash Cup this year. I enjoyed having these conversations in person!