IMPORTANT

HANDICAPPING CHANGES from April 1^st 2024

England Golf are introducing changes both in the way :-

A) That your handicap is maintained and processed.

B) And in the way Competitions are to be handicapped

A) HANDICAP MAINTENANCE

 Firstly FOURBALL (betterball pairs)  competitions over 18 holes in Strokeplay, Stableford or Bogey will become acceptable scores for handicapping.

Adjustment will only be made to a player who has contributed to 9 or more holes and only if the pair has achieved 42 pts or 6 under par. This applies even if the player has not completed all the holes ( eg if you can’t score or better your partners score) . The system will compensate for this automatically.

Secondly in singles competitions or general play rounds, the system will assign an artificial “EXPECTED SCORES” to any holes not played ( DNS as opposed to holes not finished NR ). Note there must be a legitimate reason for not playing a hole. This technique is also used to extrapolate 9 holes rounds to an equivalent 18 hole score.

Holes started but not finished (NR) will revert to nett double bogey as is currently used.

Foursomes, Greensomes, AMAM and Scrambles remain as NON Acceptable Rounds

B) IN COMPETITIONS

The following is for information only for most competitions your received strokes will be issued on your score card or on the PC screen prior to playing.

HANDICAP INDEX will remain the same, calculated to one decimal place.  

However the calculation of COURSE HANDICAP will change and is now dependent not only on SLOPE, but also PAR and the COURSE RATING,  and is NOT rounded.

CH=HI x (SLOPE/113) +CR-PAR

The intention of this is that it makes PAR the target score in order to play to handicap instead of CR and also it makes application of Mixed Tees easier.

However the consequence is, that the PLAYING HANDICAP will vary depending on the exact Course Handicap. Tables will be provided to assist in finding your PH from your HI for a particular combination of course and %age Stroke Allowance.

PH =(CH(unrounded) x Stroke allowance) rounded

MIXED TEE allowance. The incorporation of the CR and PAR into the CH makes application of a Mixed Tee allowance only necessary if the competition format is based on strokes. This includes Matchplay but Stablefords and Bogey do not require any adjustment. The Mixed Tee Allowance MTA is the difference in par from the lowest par being played in your match.

 see "handicaps" for further information

Peter Seddon

Handicap Secretary