How Is A League Handicap Calculated…

    One of the great features of our league scoring system is that it calculates and maintains a separate league handicap for each player.  League handicaps are calculated in almost exactly the same way as your regular GAO/RCGA handicap other than we only use league scores and it's determined by using your best 4 scores out of your last 7 rather than your 10 best scores out of your last 20 like the GAO/RCGA.  The designer of the system went with 4 out of 7 because most leagues consist of about 15 - 20 weeks/scores.  He was concerned that if they used the GAO/RCGA method of best 10 out of 20 it would take far too long for league handicaps to change.

    When considering your league handicap it is important to remember that your handicap does not represent your average or typical round.  A handicap represents a players potential and this is the reason the RCGA/USGA use your best scores.  The second thing to keep in mind is that the "system" must be recognized as an inanimate, unbiased mechanism to track, record, calculate, allocate and publish numbers attached to names – nothing more.  The triggering device to set it in motion is the input of a player’s score; how many strokes the player took to complete 9 holes of golf.  The first calculation, with respect to determining a handicap, is to deduct the pre-determined course rating from the player’s score.  In our case the course rating is set at 36.  This "index" or number is the basis for determining a league handicap.  Handicaps are always expressed as an integer so the final number is always rounded up or down.

Here is an example...

 Johnny Golfer

    Johnny's last seven scores are 40, 36, 42, 36, 43, 37 (carried over from 2011) and then the 39 he shot on April 18th of this year.  The system isolates a player's four best scores which, for Johnny, are 36, 36, 37 and 39.  The system adds his four best scores together to get 148, divides by 4 to get 37 and then subtracts the pre-determined league course rating which, in our case, is set at 35 (37 – 35) to get a differential of 2.0 so Johnnys league handicap for his next round is 2.  Important - Like his regular GAO handicap, Johnny's league handicap carries over from year to year.

The Committee