Okay, but can you provide me with some more general information on all of this?
The simple answer is that, everything else being equal, if we were looking at your handicap on GOLF Link a year ago (ie prior to the introduction of Slope), it would’ve been +5. What Slope does with plus handicaps is it brings the GA Handicap closer to 0. The Daily Handicap calculation then takes the handicap back to where it would’ve been without Slope. So, are you being disadvantaged by Slope? The answer is that you’re being neither disadvantaged or advantaged as you’re playing off the same handicap you would’ve had if Slope wasn’t in operation.
For members of clubs with Slope Ratings above 113 (which is most clubs), you probably noticed that the GA Handicaps of all of your non-Plus markers came out lower on 23 January than they were before Slope was introduced. Actually, it’s not so much that they were lower, it’s more that they were closer to Scratch. The same thing happened with your Plus markers – they also became closer to Scratch. When the GA Handicaps at your club are turned into Daily Handicaps, they go back to where they would’ve been without Slope.
Slope makes no difference to the player who plays from the same tees at the same course, week after week – and this is the typical experience of most club golfers. However Slope provides a much fairer handicap for golfers who play on courses (or sets of tees) with varying degrees of difficulty.
Okay, but can you provide me with some more general information on all of this?
- The basic premise that underpins the Slope regulation is that the gross scores returned by a group of players of different abilities will become more and more spread out as the difficulty of a course increases. This is because players of lesser ability find it much harder than good players to adjust to the challenge of a difficult course.
- This also means that the gross scores of the same group of players will become closer together as a course becomes easier.
- So the differences between the handicaps of players of differing levels of ability need to expand as the course becomes harder. And they need to contract as the course becomes easier.
- Slope is all about achieving an appropriate difference between the handicaps of players of different levels of ability.
- Note that a common misunderstanding is people think that Slope decreases handicaps on easy courses and that it increases them on hard courses. This isn’t quite what Slope is doing. To compensate for the pattern of gross score distribution, what Slope does is it spreads out handicaps on a hard course (ie Plus handicaps move further away from Scratch, and normal handicaps also move further from Scratch), and it brings them all closer together on an easy course (ie Plus handicaps get closer to Scratch and normal handicaps also get closer to Scratch).
- The way Slope works in practice is that a player with a GA Handicap of 0.0 will always play off a Daily Handicap of 0, irrespective of the Slope Rating of the tees being played. (0.0 is the neutral GA Handicap value – everything revolves around 0.0.) Note that this is the way Slope works all the way around the world. So on a 140 Slope Rated course the player with a GA Handicap of 0.0 will play off 0. And on a Slope Rated course of 75, the player with a GA Handicap of 0.0 will also play of 0.
- Remember that on a high Slope Rated course, the difference needs to increase between the Daily Handicaps of players of different levels of ability. (And the higher the Slope Rating, the greater the difference needs to be.)
- For example, as Slope Ratings increase, the difference between the Daily Handicap of a player with a GA Handicap of 0.0, and the Daily Handicap of a player with a GA Handicap of 23.6, will continue to increase.
- But the player on a GA Handicap of 0.0 is not as good as the player with a GA Handicap of +7.0. So as the Slope Rating of the course increases, the player on a GA Handicap of 0.0 needs more strokes on the player with a GA Handicap of +7.0. And if the 0.0 player’s Daily Handicap is always 0, it means the only way for them to get more shots on the +7.0 player is for the player on +7.0 to have their Daily Handicap go even lower
- The key point for the Plus marker is not that a high Slope Rated course is easier for them, it is that unless their handicap goes lower, they will gain an advantage on every other player in the field.