Calculating Your Handicap

The first thing that you need to calculate your change in handicap is that you have to play a complete round of golf. The second thing is that you need to write down the amount of strokes per each hole on your score card. For the score card to be 'legal' you have to have the signature of a person you played with. It basically means that when you want to lower your handicap, you have to play with a partner.

Now that you have the scores down you start calculating the handicap. I will only describe the easiest way of doing it because I think that it's the best for beginners, when you advance in the game it may be useful to learn the other types of systems also.

In the slope system each golf course has a specific difficulty rating, also the difficulty depends on the color of the tee that you hit from. That's why most golf courses have list of the slope handicaps for the course. You use the list by first choosing the tee that you hit from, then you find your actual handicap in the list, then it shows your slope handicap for the course. You should now write that number on your score card.

Next you have to have to add together all of your strokes from all of the holes. Then you subtract your slope handicap from your total amount of strokes. Now you subtract that number from 72. If the number is positive it tells how many steps you handicap goes down, if it's negative it tells how many steps your handicap goes up. In the beginning one step is 1, however when your handicap goes under 36 then one step is only 0.5, under 26 it's 0.4, under 18 it's 0.3, under 11 it's 0.2, and under 4 it becomes 0.1. Basically it becomes harder to improve ou handicap as you become better.

The final step is to give your score card to your local caddiemaster. He/she will calculate the score once again to prevent any mistakes. You will officially receive your new handicap in about 3 days after you turned in your score card.