Golf’s handicap system will never be resolved but being up-in-arms at least makes it fun

Though it gets a bad rap, one of sport’s great joys is to be up-in-arms. Winning or being brilliant are top of everyone’s wishlist, but those are minority pursuits. Being up-in-arms, though, is open to people of all ages and abilities. A bad miss, a bad pass, a bad ref, a bad loss, a bad break, a bad team, a bad day are some of the common causes, but the list is endless.
The great thing about it is that it brings people together. You can be up-in-arms among friends. It has a unifying quality. You might not agree on anything else, but you have come to a consensus about this justified state of anger, and in a perverse way, it makes you feel better. Giving out is one of the great team sports.
Every sport has its own hot-button issues. For club golfers it is handicaps and the handicap system and alleged abuses of the handicap system and the perceived unfairness of the handicap system. It is a bountiful source of gossip and finger-pointing and skulduggery.
You thought golf was gentle and refined? It is a nest of vipers.
The big issue used to be handicap bandits, and that hasn’t gone away, but it has been joined by uproar about high handicappers sweeping up prizes at every turn. In this general furore a streak of hypocrisy has been exposed. Have we forgotten the purpose of handicaps?
The chief complaint seems to be that these new supersized handicaps are rewarding bad golf. A founding principle of the handicap system, however, was to offer some level of indemnity against bad golf for everyone. The cover is never enough. There is probably more bad golf in the world than plastic in the oceans. They can’t stop us.
For the 280,000 club golfers in the country, however, it is never enough to just worry about their own handicap because the system is based on relativity. The philosophical riddle at the heart of the matter is this: if someone else’s handicap is wrong, how can your handicap be right? Not even the Jesuits would touch that question.
How long has this being going on? Centuries. In the National Library of Scotland extracts are preserved from the diary of Tomas Kincaid, a medical student and golf enthusiast. One entry is devoted entirely to working out how best to make a fair match between two players of unequal ability. This was in 1687.
In the late 19th century, an explosion in participation brought the issue to a boil. Between 1860 and 1909 the number of golf clubs in Britain, for example, jumped from 36 to 2,786. Fair competition demanded an equitable handicap system, and this is where the arguments began.
Listen to this. In 1870, for a big club competition in Liverpool, handicaps were subject to bartering. “The allowance given to each player was arranged in full conclave, and all had the opportunity of objecting to the smallness of their own allowance, either personally or by their representatives,” according to a report in a local newspaper. “Any difference of opinion was decided by a vote of all present.”
According to a history of handicapping by Dean Knuth, formerly of the United States Golf Association, the least talented players felt most hard done by. The letters pages of newspapers bristled with complaints. “I greatly fear that the system of handicapping is such as to render it highly improbable that any but the best players will win,” wrote one disenchanted player.
Essentially, it has taken 150 years for the wheel to turn. What has changed? In 2020 the World Handicapping System [WHS] was introduced. It was more intuitive and more dynamic, and in trying to capture the relative playing abilities of the world’s 15 million club golfers, the WHS had a much wider lens.
Under the previous system in Ireland, no male golfer could have a handicap greater than 28 and no female could have a handicap greater than 45. The limit for both genders now is 54.
The upshot is that more players with handicaps in the high 30s or 40s – male players especially – are featuring in the prizes in weekend competitions, many of them for the first time in their golfing lives.
According to Golf Ireland, 10 per cent of male golfers have a handicap index in excess of 28.4 now. Under the old system, those players had a handicap that made them uncompetitive. About a third of female players now have a handicap greater than 36. The playing field is not only more stretched, it has also been ironed out.
The premise of handicapping in sport is that everybody should have an equal chance. Granted, it is a fanciful notion. In horse racing, for example, handicapping is simply a charter for cheating. Everybody is trying to beat the handicapper by deception.
In golf, the system is open to manipulation too, and the WHS has not been able to eliminate sharp practice. If you’re hell-bent on increasing your handicap, it will take a little longer than it did in the old system, but there is more scope for inflation.
It used to be the case that your handicap could only increase by one shot a year and now it can climb by up to five shots; it used to be the case that your handicap could only be affected by competition scores, but now it can also be shaped by verified casual scores. The latitude for dishonesty is obvious. People are up-in-arms about that too.
The beauty of the new system, with its expanded handicap range, is that players will stay competitive much later in life. No other sport allows that opportunity. Winning at 80, playing off 50. Should anybody have a problem with that?
Winning at 40 playing off 40? A functioning handicap system should create that opportunity.
“The great point is that our handicaps should be wrong by roughly the same amount,” wrote Henry Longhurst, the doyen of golf writers, in 1957, “and therefore right in relation to each other.”
The headline to that piece was delicious. It read: “The Professionals Can’t Play To Their Handicaps Either.”
It will never be resolved. Being up-in-arms at least makes it fun.