For a the last few years Golfing New Zealand has thought about the many golfers in New Zealand who are not a member of either a golf club or New Zealand Golf’s associate member scheme, but would like an unofficial handicap.
As the current ‘Slope System’ is owned exclusively by New Zealand Golf, it is quite right that we are not able to use any part of it. This being the case we had to invent a new scheme purely for Golfing New Zealand members, which, whilst not using the Slope, had to be close enough to enable our Golfing New Zealand members to play on the level against an officially handicapped member of a golf club.
The system we have come up is, in the most fundamental form, actually based on the factual distance of a course and its holes.
We are confident that we have created an easy to use system that is as close as we can get to an official handicap. One which will give you a true indication of your golfing ability and one we hope will encourage you to play more golf so that one day you will either join the New Zealand Golf Associate Handicap Scheme or your local Golf Club and obtain an official handicap.
It’s not rocket science — close though! We use a combination of the old (turn of the 19th century) USGA course rating formula, which is to divide the overall length of the course (in yards) by 200 and add 38.25. Plus a modified home grown system, where we divide the overall length of the course by its par and subtract nine, with which we refine depending on the difficulty of certain particular holes.
Our method gives a Course Distance Rating, for every golf course and playing tee in the country, which is surprisingly close to the current NZGA Course Rating. Studies have shown that by merely using a courses rating to calculate a players handicap is amazingly accurate.
We use a simple estimator of a player’s potential ability called ‘Second Best Score’. A player’s Handicap is formulated using our Course Distance Rating subtracted from their Adjusted Gross of the second best score he or she has submitted over their latest nine rounds, multiplied by 96%.
Our system is not a substitute for the NZGA Handicap System, but it will produce acceptable results and is a reasonable system for handicapping the otherwise “unhandicapped.”
