Golf by the Numbers

For the first time since I started playing golf 15 years ago, I can say I’m a twelve-handicap. Not twelve exactly – my current index is an all-time best 12.7, which is down from 13.5 last year. Interestingly, I said I was a fourteen-handicap in 2011, rounding the 13.5 up five-tenths of a point. Now I’m rounding the 12.7 down seven-tenths of a point. Guess I just like even numbers.

Golf handicaps are a funny thing. They’re also a bit complicated. So complicated, in fact, that I needed someone smarter than me to decipher the mathematics of it all, so I enlisted the help of Dr. Lucius Riccio, Ph.D. at Columbia University who specializes in Engineering & Business Analytics, who recently joined me on Golf Exchange Radio.

Dr. Riccio wrote a research paper on golf handicaps that came to the attention of the USGA back in the 1970’s. Under the leadership of Frank Thomas and Dean Knuth, the USGA put a group of Ph.D.’s together, including Dr. Riccio, to come up with an improvement to the current handicapping method of the day. Their solution was the slope system, which was an advancement in the practice of handicapping for amateur golfers. Prior to the slope system, a golfer’s handicap was as much a function of the courses he regularly played as his inherent ability. The slope system removed the affect of the course. The reality in the days before slope was a 10-handicap on a very difficult course could be four or five strokes better than a 10-handicap on a very easy course.

Knuth, who was the USGA’s Senior Director of Handicapping for 16 years and is affectionately known as ‘The Pope of Slope’, wrote in the April 2010 issue of Golf Digest, “Slope Rating measures the relative difficulty of a course for bogey golfers when compared with the course rating. Course rating is a measure of a course’s difficulty level for a scratch golfer.” So essentially, if every golfer in existence were a scratch, we’d only need course ratings. The slope system was supposed to be the equalizer for players with handicaps.

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