Calculate Your Golf Handicap

Simply put, your golf handicap is the average number of strokes that you shoot over or under par on a standard 18 hole golf course. In order to calculate your handicap, you will need your last five 18-hole scores (five is the minimum required for calculating your handicap), the course's slope, and the course's rating. According to the USGA's Handicapping System Manual, a course's slope measures the difficulty of a course for players who are not scratch golfers (scratch golfers are those golfers with a handicap of 0). The higher the slope, the more difficult the course; a slope of 113 denotes average difficulty. A golf course's rating is the measurement of difficulty for a scratch golfer. The rating is expressed in strokes. The higher the rating, the more challenging the course. The slope and rating can normally be found on your score card. Be careful to select the slope and rating that corresponds with the tees that you played from.

The first step in calculating your handicap is to calculate what is referred to as the handicap differential. The formula for the handicap differential is as follows:

Handicap Differential = (Your Score - Course Rating) x 113 / Slope

For example, let's say that I shot a score of 100 on a course that has a slope of 129 and a rating of 71.4. To calculate the handicap differential, I would calculate (100 - 71.4) x 113 / 129. The result, rounded to the nearest tenth, is 25.1. Make this calculation for all of the scores that you have gathered.

After calculating the handicap differential, the next step is to calculate the handicap index. The handicap index is your golf handicap. Calculating the handicap index depends on the number of scores that you have accumulated. The minimum number of scores needed is five. If you have five scores, find the lowest handicap differential of the five. Multiply this differential by .96. Delete all numbers after the tenths' digit - do not round. The resulting number is your handicap index. If you have twenty scores, find the ten lowest differentials, find their average, and then multiply the average by .96. The number of differentials that you use to calculate the handicap index is dependent on the number of scores you are working with. To find out how many differentials you use for different numbers of scores, please reference this Handicap Differentials Table.

For more information on handicaps please visit the USGA Handicap System Manual.

Will Farneth is an avid golfer and moderator of marylandgolfreview.com.