What is a golf handicap and how is it used
A persons golf handicap represents roughly your potential ability on any given round of golf. While not
exactly, you can think of a golf handicap as the average number of strokes you shoot over par
when you take the average of the best 50% of your scores. For a more detailed explanation of exactly
how a golf handicap is calculated, please check out how to
calculate golf handicap page.
The main purpose between the golf handicap is to allow golfers of all different ability levels to compete
against each other in a fair way. So somebody who is a 10 handicap wants to play somebody with a 20
handicap, the 10 handicap golfer has to give the 20 handicap golfer 10 strokes.
The strokes that are given to the 20 handicap golfer are given out based on the difficulty of the hole
being played. Each hole on an 18 hole golf course is assigned a difficulty rating, from 1-18. 1 being
the hardest and 10 being the easiest.
So in this example the 10 handicap golfer would receive 1 stroke on the golf holes ranked from 1-10,
if they were playing in a match play situation. If they were playing in stroke play, 10 strokes would simply
be subtracted from their overall score.
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