How Do You Calculate a Golf Handicap?

Since 1984, Awni K. Kaloti has served as the owner and director of Kaloti International Corp, an international food distribution company that specializes in specialty meats. Outside of his professional work, Awni K. Kaloti enjoys golfing at different courses in the Miami and Orlando areas. He currently maintains a golf handicap of 19.

For more than a century, golf handicaps have been relied on to allow players of different skill levels to compete against one another. Handicaps require players to win by a certain amount of strokes to get a victory. For example, a golfer with a handicap of 5 has to beat a golfer with a handicap of 15 by at least 10 strokes to win.

Handicaps are determined by how many strokes over or under par a player finishes on a course. A golfer that finishes 10 strokes over par on a course has a handicap of 10. Golfers compare their net scores, which are determined by total strokes minus the handicap, when playing with a handicap system. It should be noted that when traveling to other courses, the course difficulty becomes a factor in determining the handicap.