Dear Molly: I am an 80-year-old male with a Handicap Index of 20.9. I play the white tees at Indian Peaks, which are rated 64.6 with a 110 slope. In a recent round I shot 85, which had a differential of 21 (just about my handicap). If I were playing against my 25-year-old granddaughter from those same tees, her rating would be 70.0 with a 125 slope. If she also shot 85 (her typical score), her handicap would be considerably lower than mine and I would get strokes, but it still doesn’t seem fair.
Years ago I used to play golf with a male friend who had never completely recovered from injuries he had suffered in a serious car crash. He couldn’t hit the ball any farther than I could (150-180 off the tee in those days) and usually had about the same index I did. We liked to play matches for high stakes, like a cocktail at the 19th hole, and we liked to play by the rules. But though we’d play the same tees, Bill always had to give me strokes.
“That’s discriminatory,” he would moan. “You get strokes, just because you’re a woman.”
I’d just cackle at that, happy to have the advantage. But to this day, it strikes me as the one flaw in golf’s otherwise equalizing handicap system: If a man and a woman have the same power and Handicap Index and play from the same tees, the woman will get strokes.
Lee Rainwater, the USGA’s Director of Handicapping Education and Outreach, explains that the Course Rating System issues separate course and slope ratings for males and females using scratch and bogey model players for each gender that have defined hitting distances. Of course, he says, “Our data shows that for the scratch and bogey model players we use for Course Rating, males have longer hitting distances than females. With length being a key factor in determining golf course difficulty, ratings are going to be higher for females than they are for males.”
Rainwater acknowledges that does not apply for all males and females, and CGA course rating guru Aaron Guereca notes: “The USGA Rules of Handicapping and Course Rating Rules, in all their wisdom, do not consider age. That’s because a scratch and bogey golfer can be any age.”
But of course age affects hitting distances. In your case, for instance, at 80 you’ve lost a few yards. Wisely, you’ve moved on up to the white tees, which at 5,486 yards probably fit your game. Your 25-year-old granddaughter may hit the ball as far as you do, or even outhit you, so is she giving you strokes?
Here’s Rainwater’s calculation on that based on her typically shooting 85 from your tees, which are rated 70 for women with a slope of 125: “Her handicap would be more like 12.7. Assuming that par is 72 for both players, the Course Handicap for both players would be 13. So no strokes would be exchanged and if they both went out and shot their target score (par + handicap) of 85, their net scores would be 72s and they would tie.”
That sounds like a nice result, but consider that if she played the whites by the same rating and slope that applies to you, she would be a 5 and have to give you 8. Or if you played the whites by the same rating and slope that applies to her, you would be a 21 and she would have to give you 8.
Eight shots or zero. Wow! If your games are the same, that’s a big price to pay just because your genders are different.
Ah, but you’re not playing in the U.S. Open, are you? Here’s Aaron Guereca’s suggestion: “Match play has different rules and as long as the two individuals involved agree that one should either gain or lose strokes in addition to the calculated course handicaps, that would be allowable.”
Aaron is NOT saying that every husband should show his wife this article and beg for more strokes, or that every woman who joins a mostly-men’s club ought to have her course handicap adjusted in the same way the men’s are. Sorry, guys!
But in a friendly match, especially a family match, negotiations should be in order. Tell your granddaughter, Molly says respect your elders with a few extra strokes.
Do you have a question about golf etiquette, golf relationships or the culture of golf in Colorado? Email it to Molly McMulligan, the CGA’s on-the-course advisor on how to have more fun on the golf course. Her creator, researcher and writer is golf journalist and CGA member Susan Fornoff.
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