Handicap Allowances in Golf Pad Events

Modified on Thu, 7 Nov at 1:12 PM

What is Handicap Allowance?

Handicap allowances make sure that players of different skill levels can compete fairly in both 9-hole and 18-hole formats of golf.

How is a Handicap Allowance applied?
If playing a net competition, the percentage of handicap selected is applied to a golfer's Course Handicap to ultimately determine their playing handicap.

Individual vs. team formats.

Individual - In the Events competition settings tournament organizers will see the option to apply a percentage. This handicap allowance percentage will be applied to all individuals within the competition.

Team - In the Events competition settings tournament organizers will see the option to apply a percentage to each golfer on the team. To confirm, different golfers on the team may have different handicap allowance percentages, which are then used to generate the team handicap. For example: Say the competition is a 4 person team scramble. In Events golfers will be listed as "A player" thru "D player" in order of lowest to highest handicap. The most popular handicap allowance based on this format is 25%, 20%, 15%, 10%. This means player A receives 25% of their Ind. handicap, player B is 20% and so on through the team. The overall team playing handicap for scramble formats (or similar) is then calculated after the handicap allowance has been applied to the individuals within.

Default handicap allowances in Golf Pad Events.

It is important to know that handicap allowance percentages in Events are fully customizable. Ultimately it is the tournament organizers decision as to what percentage to apply. That said, there are some recommendations and commonly used defaults based on the format, team size, etc. To assist the tournament organizer Golf Pad Events will be display the most commonly used handicap allowance percentages for team events. These can be seen in team competition settings when net has been selected. Again, the tournament organizer can edit these as they wish.

Here is the USGA recommendation table for Handicap Allowances, based on format, round type, field size.