What's my golf handicap?

A golf handicap enables you to gauge the quality of your game and compare it to others, regardless of what course you play. As part of the Rules of Golf, the USGA has created an algorithm for calculating your handicap based on your most recent 20 games.

With the Golf Handicap Calculator (currently available only for android devices) from earth42, you can enter rating and slope parameters of golf courses you play, and then enter your score and course for each game. Once you have at least 5 games stored, it will calculate and graph your "differentials", the normalized scores, and your "handicap index"; and once you have a handicap index, the calculator can also predict your score for a stored course, or from a rating and slope that you enter.

NEWSFLASH: I have recently had a very helpful conversation with theoclitus, a user who plays nine-hole golf courses. These courses have nine-hole ratings, and the newest version, 3.0, deals with both nine-hole and eighteen-hole courses - just register the course in your list with its nine-hole rating and slope, and check the box indicating it's a nine-hole course. If you play nine on an eighteen-hole course, and they don't furnish nine-hole ratings and slopes for the front and back, you can just use the course's given rating and slope, but you must double your score when you enter the game in order to get the correct handicap index, or at least as close as you can get. There is now also a preference in Settings to choose whether to display your handicap index as eighteen-hole or nine-hole, and regardless of that, you can select nine-hole or not when predicting your score.

When you first install the app, it will flash a brief message to the effect that you have no games entered. Using the Action Bar overflow (a little icon of three dots in a column at the right of the regular system buttons) or your device's Option menu button, you should first navigate to the 'Edit Courses' choice, where you will see a default course listed as a template. Click on that item, and you will go into an edit dialog, whereby you can change it to be your first real course.
To add more courses, click the add option from the options menu.

Once you have at least one course in your list, you can use it to enter a game. Using the options menu, navigate to the 'Edit Games' choice, where at first there will be a default game listed. Click on this to go into the edit dialog. Enter a score and choose the course that applies from the list, being sure to use a nine-hole course with a nine-hole score. Hit 'Update' and your game will be added.

While it is not necessary to calculate your handicap index, you should add your games in chronological order. Then the graphic on the home page will illustrate your wonderfully improving trend :-)
When you have twenty games stored, the Add a Game function will automatically roll the oldest game off the list when it adds your new game. Under USGA rules, the most recent twenty games are used to calculate your handicap index, though you only need five to start with.

Once you have at least five games, your handicap index will be calculated and graphed automatically on the main page. You can then see your real progress at a glance, and you can also predict your score with the Predict dialog. In the Predict dialog, you can simply choose a course from the drop-down, or enter any rating and slope you want to use. Hit Ok, and it will tell you how you should do.

Privacy Statement:

The data you enter for this app is held only in your device, in a protected area. Neither earth42 nor anybody else has any access to it. You need no network connection for it to work. The only reason the app requests Internet access is for the little ad banner it runs.