Rules and Rants

There seems to be two types of golfers out there... the kind who strive to get their handicap as low as possible and the other who doesn’t mind seeing their handicap trend upward as a result of a few bad rounds.

The golfer looking to lower their Handicap Factor is checking his or her scoring record before a round to see what he has to shoot for his handicap to go down and is heartbroken when they have a great round outside of the province’s active handicap season. This golfer will face a new reality next season because of a key change to the Handicap System in Canada with respect to Equitable Stroke Control (ESC).

Spurred on by thousands of comments made on handicap surveys completed by Golf Canada members earlier this year, the RCGA Handicap and Course Rating Committee conducted a statistical analysis (aided immensely by Dr. Tim Swartz, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at Simon Fraser University) and has approved a change to the ESC method, bringing it into equivalency with current ESC calculations employed by the United States Golf Association (USGA). The new ESC method takes effect March 1, 2012 to coincide with the release of the 2012-2015 version of the Handicap Manual.

To remind those of us who have swapped a sand wedge for a snow shovel, ESC is the downward adjustment of individual hole scores for handicap purposes in order to make Handicap Factors more representative of a player's potential scoring ability. It sets a maximum number that a player can post on any hole depending on the player's Course Handicap.

The modification to the current ESC calculation is illustrated below:

Why the change? The essence of handicapping is to allow people of differing abilities compete on an equitable basis and we believe the new ESC method will help achieve that goal.

Currently, in a match between a high handicapper and low handicapper, the low handicapper has a better than 50% chance of winning. The new ESC will bring that percentage closer to 50.

And there is no question that using the same ESC method as the USGA has many benefits for the thousands of ‘snowbirds’ who flock south to the USA each winter. No longer will they have to make two separate ESC adjustments (one for their USGA Index and one for their Handicap Factor) and the small numerical disparity in handicaps caused by different ESC methods will be a thing of the past.

The overall impact for most of the 350,000 golfers in Canada maintaining official handicaps is that their handicap will trend upward. How much is impossible to predict, but the ‘Wild Bill’ who tends to have a couple blow-up holes every round will likely be more affected than the ‘Steady Eddie’ who rarely makes worse than double-bogey.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us at 1-800-263-0009.

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Don’t forget, you can find out more about the Rules of Golf by clicking here or if you have a specific rules question, you can always Ask an Expert.

The 2012-2015 RCGA Rules of Golf book is currently available for sale by calling us Monday to Friday from 9am – 5pm EST at 1-800-263-0009 ext. 283. Rule books will not be shipped until 2012 and will be available to purchase online in the coming weeks.