How the game works
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Best eight of the last twenty scores, a slope of 113 as the baseline and a ceiling of 54.0. The formula is shorter than most golfers think.
Golf's handicap system was unified in 2020 into a single method, the World Handicap System (WHS), governed jointly by the USGA and The R&A. It replaced six regional systems, and its output is a number called the Handicap Index.
Step one: the score differential
Each round produces a differential:
(113 ÷ Slope Rating) × (Adjusted Gross Score − Course Rating − PCC)
Slope Rating is a number from 55 to 155 that describes how much harder a course is for a bogey golfer than for a scratch player; 113 is the standard. Course Rating is the number of strokes a scratch golfer is expected to need. PCC, the playing conditions calculation, adjusts the score when the course played unusually hard or easy that day.
Step two: the best eight of twenty
The Handicap Index is the average of the best eight of a player's most recent twenty differentials. A golfer with fewer than twenty rounds gets an index after as few as three, with an adjustment. A golfer is not penalised by bad days, because only the best 40 percent of the sample counts.
Step three: the course handicap
An index is portable but not directly usable on a given course. To play, the golfer converts it:
Course Handicap = Handicap Index × (Slope Rating ÷ 113) + (Course Rating − Par)
The result is the number of strokes the player receives for that course and tees, and it differs from one set of tees to another.
Limits and safeguards
- The maximum Handicap Index is 54.0, for men and women alike.
- A low-handicap golfer's index is capped from rising too quickly by a soft cap and a hard cap, so an unusual run of poor scores cannot lift it without limit.
- Scores in a round are limited by Net Double Bogey, a maximum on each hole, so a single disaster hole does not wreck the differential.