What cruel fate has befallen the low handicapper? If social media is your guide, swathes of golfers with single figure handicaps have packed in playing competitions or are seriously thinking about doing so.
Why are they so disgruntled? The World Handicap System, of course. The argument is the five-year-old calculator favours higher handicappers – both in the shots allocated in competitions and the way it reacts to the best 8-out-of-20 scoring differentials. Good golfers can no longer compete.
But is there truth behind the claim, or is it a golfing urban myth? Are low handicappers really up against it, or is the noise overblown?
Can low handicappers beat the numbers in the World Handicap System?
Theoretically, a handicap system should give everyone an equal chance of winning. In practice, certain factors can get in the way.
Most golfers sit in the mid to high handicap range. When England Golf broke down the numbers, fewer than five per cent of players had an index of 5 or less – the old Category 1 in the CONGU system.
By contrast, more than 40 per cent sat between 13 and 20 and just over a quarter weighed in between 21 and 28.
The average male handicap in England is 17.38. For women, it’s 28.09.
In the United States, just over two per cent of female golfers and around 10 per cent of men boast a handicap of 4.9 or lower.
So low handicappers are a minority, outgunned in virtually every competition field.
We also know the higher your handicap, the more potential there is for big improvement and the more likely it is you can shoot below your mark.
The odds of a player with a handicap index of 25 to 29 shooting a net differential of four under is 1 in 25. For a golfer between 0.0 and 4.9, it’s around 1 in 87.
Some golfers argue WHS is to blame for this – that it moves higher handicaps upwards quicker. Does that make the system unfair, or could something else be at play?
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The problem of variance?
Consider the flip of a coin. You know the probability of heads or tails is equal. If you flipped it an infinite number of times and bet solely on ‘tails’, you’d neither win nor lose in the long-term.
But what if you flipped it 100 times? It may land on ‘tails’ on only 38 occasions – at which point you’d be sore in the pocket. That doesn’t mean the coin is rigged. It’s variance at work.
Higher handicap golfers have a wider scoring range. Their bad days can be terrible, but their great rounds can be stratospheric.
Low-handicap players are generally more consistent. They don’t have too many disasters, but their best rounds don’t often veer too far from the average.
Even in a system designed to bridge the talent divide, with a field dominated by mid and high handicap players there are more chances for them to roll the dice and post a brilliant round.
Are low handicappers really not winning competitions?
We can test the claims of those claiming WHS skulduggery. I’ve looked at the competition scores at two clubs – my current home and immediate previous – over separate seasons.
While the sample size is admittedly limited, and there was not a perfect separation of categories, 49 competitions is still a snapshot of real golf under WHS competitions.
At the first, I tracked 21 men’s competitions in 2024. Seven winners had a handicap of 9 or under, including one off +3. Eight winners were between 10 and 20, four were 20 or over, and two were won by players off 30+.
This year, at my new club, I tracked 28 competitions from April to October. Six winners had Playing Handicaps of 9 or under, one of whom was a plus handicapper who took three victories. Two more played off 10, 13 were between 11 and 20, and seven were 21 or higher.
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Given single figure golfers make up a small proportion of the overall membership, isn’t this evidence they aren’t suffering quite as much as suggested?
Variance, of course, cuts both ways. Consistency can have its own statistical advantage. But that is still far from the opening statement, which is the claim that low handicappers can’t win.
Truth versus perception?
There is a psychological theory called the illusory truth effect. Statements that are repeated often are more likely to be perceived as true – even when they are not.
We are focused on recency bias. A midweek Stableford won with 46 points by a high-handicapper sticks in the brain. Our minds fill in the rest of the gaps.
When I started pulling up the scores from this season, I was convinced I would see a lot of big handicap winners. Partly that was because of my own experience of shooting 40 points a couple of times in a summer competition was losing on both occasions.
But on the basis of this data, another picture emerges. Low handicappers can win under WHS and – at least in my recent experience – they are. I’d be interested to see what figures emerge from your own clubs, or whether England Golf, or any other governing body, has statistics on who is coming out on top in events.
That way we can focus on numbers rather than noise.
Now have your say
What do the figures reveal at your clubs? Are high handicappers having it all their own way, or are the results more spread? Let us know in the comments, email me at s.carroll@nationalclubgolfer.com or get in touch on X.
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