We’ve all heard the claims. Another competition and another huge Stableford number takes home the bacon. But could data give us an idea of how widespread such scores are on our golf courses?
We discussed the World Handicap System Data Report on The NCG Golf Podcast, looking at how many players were given Exceptional Score Reductions.
That is triggered when a score differential is at least seven to 9.9 strokes better than the player’s WHS index when that round was played.
When that’s the case, a one stroke reduction is applied to every one of the most 20 recent scores in their record.
If the score differential is 10 strokes or more better than the player’s index, then a two-stroke reduction goes onto all of the most recent 20 scores. If a golfer doesn’t have 20 scores in their record, the reduction is applied to all the scores they have.
The WHS data report reveals that 96.9 per cent of golfers did not trigger an Exceptional Score Reduction in 2025.
The data was put together using scoring information from 57 national associations. More than 150 million rounds, played by over 6.5 million golfers, were included in the figures.
Overall, 72.8% of all scores submitted were general play but one area – the United States – accounted for a little more than half of all the scores collected.
In Great Britain & Ireland, a common refrain is about the size of some of the scores that are winning competitions, particularly in Stablefords.
So should we expect to see lots of players triggering a reduction? Steve Carroll and Dan Murphy discussed the issue on the podcast.
“I would have thought that we would have seen quite a lot of exceptional score reductions if there was going to be this idea of everyone scoring 48 points every week, and the data suggests something otherwise,” Carroll said.
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“I mean, 96.9% of golfers recorded no exceptional score. That’s 96.9% of golfers in 150.5 million rounds, albeit again 72.3% of those are general play.
“1.2% of golfers triggered the one-shot reduction, while 0.7% of golfers triggered the two-shot reduction. If you combine them both together, one shot and two-shot, it was 1.2% of golfers altogether [who were given a reduction]
“Genuinely exceptional rounds are pretty rare, so these figures seem to suggest.”
Can competition golf skewer scores?
Can the pressure of competitions affect your scoring?
Murphy said: “When I think about golf in general play versus golf in competition, it’s way more difficult to record a good score in a competition than it is in general play.
“If we went for a game tomorrow, we’d be having a lovely time. We’d be chatting away, probably about WHS, probably about a Hollywood producer, we’d cover all the subjects. But we’d be relaxed.
“We’d be enjoying ourselves, and then by the end of it, there is a way better chance for me personally that when I added it up I’d have quite a good score.
“In a club competition my brain would be whirring trying to do the best score I could. That would undoubtedly make my golf worse.”
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Have you been handed an exceptional score reduction? Have you seen winners posting scores well under their handicap at your club? Let us know by leaving a comment or get in touch with us on X!
