It’s designed to be universal but the World Handicap System has always been implemented in slightly different ways depending on where you play your golf.
In the United States, Most Likely Score means there are circumstances where you don’t have to hole out, while match play games are allowed as acceptable scores.
Now in Great Britain & Ireland, the way governing bodies administer a part of the Rules of Handicapping is also open to variation. If you’re in Scotland, Wales, or Ireland, clubs have the power to alter the Playing Handicap Allowances that are used in competitions.
In England, they don’t.
Golf Ireland are also piloting a Strokes Gained Ratings System that could be the primary qualification method for all its men’s and women’s championships from next year.
Using scoring data returned to Golf Ireland’s WHS Clubhouse platform, players will receive an Adjusted Strokes Gained rating driven by their scores over a rolling two-year period.
The governing body said it will measure how many strokes better or worse a golfer performs in each round compared to an average championship-level player, accounting for course difficulty and playing conditions.
Launching the pilot at the end of March, Mark Wehrly, Championships and Rules Director at Golf Ireland, said: “While we’re committed to continuing to use both the World Amateur Golf Rankings and the World Handicap System as qualification criteria for our championships, we wanted to trial a new primary method of qualification for championships that was developed specifically for that purpose.”
This follows England Golf’s own Championship Entry policy that can deny some participants a place in certain tournaments based on the differences between a player’s competition and general play scores.
They’re all examples of handicapping rules being tweaked to suit regional circumstances but, with Golf GB&I charged as the body which replaced CONGU in administering the WHS in all the home nations, should there be a collective approach?
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Does WHS need to be the same throughout GB&I?
In an episode of The NCG Golf Podcast, Tom Irwin and I discussed the issue and I said: “I know Playing Handicaps only apply to the competition, they don’t apply to the actual score that goes into the WHS.
“But I do think it’s a bit strange when you say, ‘we’re going to have a universal handicap system’ and not only in other parts of the world is it done differently but it’s also [now] done differently within GB&I, where we’ve got the same software and we’ve got a group that’s supposed to be there to administer and control WHS in a unified way.
“Then we’ve got the biggest authority [England] that says, ‘we’re going a different way’.”
But Irwin believes a big policy programme can be delivered differently at a local level. He explained: “There’s nothing wrong with a system that’s unified on a macro level that is then implemented differently at a local level.
“If our office was a golf club and we said, ‘we’re going to have a summer competition and we’re going to take everybody’s indexes, but because of the course we’re playing or because we know each other, what we’re going to do is just use 50% of people’s indexes. That would be up to us, wouldn’t it?
“We’d form our own informal competition committee and based on our own circumstances, and anything we wanted to achieve from that day, we’d just interpret the handicap system differently. But we’re using the World Handicap System as a starting point.
“I think that’s fair enough. I actually think that’s pretty sensible. It’s a bit like a governance, which I’m involved with at school level, where you will get a model policy through from a local authority that says, ‘this is how you should look after safeguarding’ or whatever else, and then you tweak that policy to suit your own environment.
“I think that’s what good governance looks like. It’s an overarching body, or in this case, a second tier of golf administration in the home unions as underlings to the R&A and USGA, saying, ‘we are happy to delegate some of this to clubs to administer’ so they can achieve contentment at club level, which is what everybody wants.”
Now have your say on the World Handicap System
What do you make of the decision of the various home unions on Playing Handicap allowances? Should it have been all for one, or is it fine for England to go its own way and the rest of GB&I to go another? Let me know in the comments, email me at s.carroll@nationalclubgolfer.com, or drop us a line on X.
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