Letter to America: A Brit’s Opinion of the World Handicap System

For our golf-loving brethren across the ocean, the new global system of determining handicaps is not everyone’s cup of tea

Starting before World War II, British journalist Alistair Cooke broadcast 15-minute trans-Atlantic “letters” on the radio, first from the UK to the U.S., and, starting in 1946, having recently become a U.S. citizen, the other way. His “Letter from America” ran on the BBC World Service for 58 years and nearly 3,000 episodes, with Cooke retiring in 2004, just a few weeks before his death at age 95. For many, myself included, Cooke’s dry wit, keen eye, and dulcet tones were among the immovable feasts of a Sunday morning, his topics ranging from the Cold War to the Cuban missile crisis, via a history of Häagen-Dazs ice cream and a thousand equally delicious subjects. He became a golf enthusiast in his mid-50s, and the few “Letters” that strayed into his passion are at least matched by his collected written musings on the game.

This “Letter to America” is an attempt to pay a respectful tribute to Cooke’s golf content, noting, as he did so eloquently, the subtle differences in the way we play the game on opposing sides of “the pond.”

 

world handicapping
Illustration by Gary Hovland

 

One of Cooke’s finest written pieces, called “Marching Orders,” sets out some of those differences by examining the annual “Day of British Golf” event at his beloved home club, San Francisco Golf Club. Alongside delicious observations such as the removal of all towels from the showers and the one-off addition of gallons of Kümmel to the bar stock, a final Local Rule makes me yearn both for a world with Alistair Cooke still resident and an era when we could get away with this statement: “Score cards need not be carried. Each player is put on his honor to announce his final score, however surprising the figure may be to the opposing team.”

The World Handicapping System launched over here in November 2020, three days before the second Covid-19 lockdown in England brought a four-week embargo on this maddening game. Had Franz Kafka been a golfer, he’d have been waking up in cold sweats at the prospect. After all, golf is meant to be fun, and given the mind-bending complexity of the game’s Rules (which Cooke elsewhere described as being “as exciting as the propositions of Euclid”), making golf’s systems even less penetrable was the last thing we needed.

The validity of the term “World” was called into question early on, as those Scots playing their national game would soon discover that scores north of Hadrian’s Wall were incompatible with the English system. But as Anglo-Scottish relations have been an issue for even longer than golf has been played up there, we oughtn’t to be too shocked by this. And perhaps “System” might also come under scrutiny, for it implies that the thing will work, though it had already crashed several times by the time the pandemic began.

But before resting blame too firmly at the door of the game’s well-meaning administrators, it is time we Brits had a long, hard look in the mirror. Cooke would no doubt be amused by the complete inability of many of us to fill out certain basic details required for a handicap submission, as we can hardly pretend that the scorecard is new technology. Upon this manual data source, one ought to be able to accurately report name, date, choice of tee boxes, and some token effort at a signature, but I doubt if three in every British four-ball consistently manages three of these four items.

Then we get into the murky waters of how many strokes you actually get, which leads to a queue of perplexed pensioners staring with failing vision at an abstract collage that breaks down each handicap index, mysteriously alters it by some slope rating algorithm (which almost everyone incorrectly believes defines the difficulty of a given course) to reach course handicap, whereupon another field factors in the format of play to finally reach one’s playing handicap—i.e., the number of damned shots we can expect to receive and then immediately squander.

Elsewhere, Cooke includes in one collection a photograph of two treasured cards, with the recorded scores of his matches in late January of 1966 against Rita Hayworth, and despite the clear distractions of strolling around some Californian paradise with “The Love Goddess,” he managed to not only sneak home in both matches, but record all the pertinent data as well. If he could manage to complete these cards without issue, what excuse might we possibly tender, when hacking around with Bill and Stanley?

 


It is time we Brits had a long, hard look in the mirror. Cooke would no doubt be amused by the complete inability of many of us to fill out certain basic details required for a handicap submission, as we can hardly pretend that the scorecard is new technology.


 

But the key cultural shift for golfers over here is in the rigorous requirement to file all scores, thus creating a vast, public dossier of our golfing miseries. For the previous 20 or so years, there was a broad understanding that one needed only three scorecard submissions in a calendar year to maintain an “active” or “official” handicap. This would lead to a spike in the number of scorecards snatched from Pro Shop counters in the late autumn, along with a surge in small-pencil sales and, most likely, the consumption of post-round single malt.

Once upon a time, voicing an intent to file one’s card meant tearing it into a thousand tiny pieces and throwing them at a nearby waste-paper basket. But with the central computer now demanding 20 scores in order to perform some unfathomable dance with the best eight, a typical Brit has to up his game or expect to not be eligible for competitions for another half a dozen years or so. We must file each score, and do so before leaving the premises, on some app for which the access credentials are as difficult to understand or remember as the mechanics of the golf swing. Or the World Handicapping System.

Once you have arrived at this position, strange things happen overnight as a result of ancient cards disappearing from the calculation mechanism. That dreadful finish when in the hunt for a half-decent score months ago might drop off the bottom, meaning that yesterday’s equally dire effort actually reduces one’s index, the subsequent slash striking just at the very nadir of our fragile confidence. All of this happens at midnight here, which is in itself confusing as there are a good many places where it is not midnight, so “what happens there” I begin to wonder. Then I stop, for golf is complex enough without disappearing down rabbit scrapes (correction: abnormal ground conditions) of our own making.

Such things settle down in time, of course, so we can at least hope that we will come to accept, and maybe even understand, the new system in due course. But we Brits are a conservative race, and the realm of golf is a particularly stubborn bastion of that tendency, so for the time being perhaps, ask us how we played rather than what we scored. For the chances are we don’t yet know the answer to the latter question, and you risk being the recipient of a long and depressing rant about how it wasn’t like this in the old days. But at least it stops us talking about the weather.

 

Thank you for supporting our journalism. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the Winter 2025 issue of LINKS Magazine. Click here for more information.
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Andrew T
13 days ago

“…the number of damned shots we can expect to receive and then immediately squander” ~ literally laughed out loud at that!

Terrific column!

Last edited 13 days ago by Andrew T
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