I learned that your Handicap index is not meant to reflect your average score, it's meant to reflect your best potential.
Here are some other important definitions:
- Course rating tells scratch golfers how difficult the course will be;
- Slope rating (a term trademarked by the USGA) is a measurement of the difficulty of a golf course for bogey golfers relative to the course rating. The minimum slope rating is 55 and the maximum is 155, average difficulty is 113
- ESC: Equitable Stroke Control: is part of the USGA Handicap System, and is a feature of that system that is designed to minimize the effects of "distaster holes". ESC sets a maximum per-hole score that you can turn in for handicap purposes, and those per-hole maximums are based on your course handicap.
- Adjusted Gross Score: Gross score is, of course, every stroke a golfer has taken during a round, added up to a total score. Adjusted gross score is a golfer's stroke total for a round after accounting for the maximum per-hole scores allowed by the USGA's Equitable Stroke Control (ESC) guidelines.Also note that even when ESC limits are in use, golfers must still count all their strokes. If you score 89, you don't get to claim to your buddies that you shot 79 because of ESC limits. Your score is the number of strokes you used. But the score you submit to a handicap committee is the total that results after you apply Equitable Stroke Control (and that figure is known as your adjusted gross score).
- Course handicap is really the crux of the USGA Handicapping System. It's the number that determines how many strokes - if any - you get to reduce your net score by on each hole at each different golf course you play.Course handicap is a result of the addition of "slope rating" to "course rating" as factors in the USGA Handicapping System in the early 1980s. A player's scores and the course ratings and slope ratings of golf courses played are used to calculate a "handicap index." But not all golf courses are created equal; some are easy, some are tough, and some are in the middle. What happens if your handicap index was earned playing a very easy course, but now you're about to play a very tough course? Handicap index alone doesn't account for that, so a second calculation is needed. That second calculation is course handicap, which adjusts your handicap index up or down depending on the degree of difficulty of the specific course you're about to play.
- USGA Handicap Index is a numeral, to one decimal place, that represents a golfer's potential for scoring. A handicap index of 14.5, for example, indicates that a golfer will, on his or her best days, shoot somewhere around 14 or 15 strokes over par. Handicap Index is not an average of a golfer's scores, but rather an estimate of what the golfer might shoot on his or her best days
