In response to the growing debate (and controversy) surrounding Australia’s new golf handicapping system, Golf Australia has announced a new formula which will be used to calculate golfers’ handicaps.
In a letter to Australian golf clubs, new Golf Australia Chairman John Hopkins detailed the upcoming changes, stating in part that: “The Board believes that the proposed changes will please the Australian golf community and we will soon start to see a handicap system more closely aligned to the way we play our golf.”
In essence, there will be four amendments to the Golf Australia Handicap System:
1. Alter ‘Best 10 of 20’ to ‘Best 8 of 20’.
2. Change the Bonus for Excellence multiplier from 0.96 to 0.93.
3. Introduce an Anchor which will prevent a player’s handicap from increasing any more than 4 strokes beyond their best exact handicap from the previous 12-month rolling period.
4. Golf Link will cap the score that goes into a player’s handicap record at no more than 50 (women) and 40 (men) over the course rating
These four priority amendments will come into effect on Wednesday 21 September2011.
The new formula was derived based on an intensive statistical analysis that found that the recent “Best 10 of 20” handicapping system had, according to Hopkins “overcorrected the previous heavy bias in favour of low markers to a significant bias in favour of the higher markers”.
Read the entire Amendment Document here
Read more additional news on Golf Australia’s Handicaping System:
http://golfaustralia.org.au/default.aspx?s=newsandcommunication
A four-time winner of the Australian Golf Media Awards, including Best Photojournalism, Best Opinion, Best Column and Best Photographic Presentation, Inside Golf Group Editor Richard Fellner is the quintessential Golf Tragic, having played the game for over 50 years (but has never gotten any better!) He has played and reviewed courses all over the world, and has interviewed many of the great players of the game (including Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Greg Norman). Richard is a member of both the Australian Golf Media Association and the Golf Society of Australia, and has been a featured guest on many Australian "sports talk" radio shows and networks, including ABC Grandstand, SEN 1116, Melbourne Talk Radio 1377, 2GB and others.
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