Should A Golf Handicap Ever Be Able To ‘Travel Well’ Under The WHS?

Some, or perhaps most, golfers will have heard someone at some stage say, “Oh, watch out for him – his handicap travels well,” or, “That will be a tough match to win – their handicaps travel well from that club.”

And most of us understand the implication that their home club is more difficult than other courses and their golf handicaps are higher than they would be if they played elsewhere, so when they do play elsewhere, they find it easy to play to handicap or better.

However, if the handicap system in place – whether WHS or the old Standard Scratch Score – is doing its job properly, that should never be the case. Why? Because these systems are supposed to be designed for parity, both among different courses and clubs and between all the different sets of tee markers at your home club.

This, of course, is an immensely tall order because all courses are widely different, with their own particular nuances, challenges and conditions. But all that is supposed to be factored in via slope rating and course rating under WHS, such that if your index is 7.3 at your home club, as mine currently is, that handicap should be fair for you wherever you play, and from whatever set of tees you play.

However, I’m not sure it works 100% or even close to that, if I’m honest. I’ve written before about my desire to play as much golf from the back tees as possible because, on the face of it at least, I feel I have more chance of playing to handicap with the extra shots that gives me, despite the added difficulty those extra shots are supposed to reflect.

And we will all have played courses where the slope and/or course rating don’t seem to reflect how difficult or otherwise we perceive that course to be.

At my home club of Royal Ashdown Forest, I get seven shots off the yellows and ten off the whites, mainly as a result of nearly two shots difference in the course ratings. I’ll probably fall flat on my face and shoot hundreds next time I play off the whites, but certainly in the summer when there’s plenty of run, I genuinely don’t feel it is three shots harder.

Similarly, if I were to go forward to the reds, I would only get three shots. I have once played off them in a foursomes event and struggle to believe that it’s four shots easier than the yellows.

If I’m correct in my observations from my home club and you then extrapolate from that intra-club scenario to all the thousands of courses out there, then surely it would be nigh-on impossible to achieve parity across every set of tees at every golf club, despite the very best intentions of the WHS.

And if that is true, it does, of course, leave the door open for handicaps to continue to ‘travel well’. I definitely feel that nine times out of ten I have more chance of playing to or bettering my handicap when I play away from home, as evidenced by only one of my eight current counting scores being from my home club.

This may be slightly skewed as I do put in far more cards away from home than at home, but I suspect that my handicap index would be a little higher if it were all home club scores.

This is mainly because I play a lot of courses on my travels, but maybe I also feel that my home club is more difficult than the number of shots it gives me at certain times of year or in certain conditions, so my inclination is to focus on away scores given that I still want to stay as low as possible for as long as possible.

That, in effect, is then also saying that if my handicap were higher with only home club scores, I do believe it would then ‘travel well’ elsewhere. And then you’re into the realms of opponents at away clubs thinking that you’re trying to pull a fast one when you turn up and beat them on their home patch!

So, does, or can, WHS achieve complete parity across all courses such that no-one’s handicap can ever be said to ‘travel well’? I don’t think it does and, in all truth, I don’t really think it ever can.