Dear Golfer,
This month, we take a closer look at understanding exceptional score reductions and your Handicap Index®, explaining how exceptional scores affect your Handicap Index to keep it reflective of your true ability. We’re also excited to feature a tribute to golfing legend Nick Price, celebrating his remarkable achievements and lasting impact on the game.
HANDICAP NEWS
Understanding Exceptional Score Reductions and Your Handicap Index
Ever had a round where everything seemed to go right? When a player posts an exceptionally low score, the World Handicap System™ (WHS™) applies adjustments to ensure the Handicap Index remains a true reflection of skill. Here’s how Rule 5.9 works:
Number of strokes the Score Differential is lower than a player’s Handicap Index in effect when the round was played | Exceptional score reduction | ||
7.0 – 9.9 | -1.0 | ||
10.0 or more | -2.0 |
When an exceptional score (significantly lower than your current Handicap Index) is posted, the WHS makes an automatic adjustment by reducing your Handicap Index according to an adjustment table. This reduction applies to your last 20 scores, ensuring the exceptional score’s influence is felt in your Handicap Index, while naturally tapering off as new scores are added.
Here are a few key details:
– Cumulative Adjustments: If you continue to submit exceptional scores, the reductions will build cumulatively.
– Fewer than 20 Scores: For golfers with fewer than 20 rounds in their record, the reduction applies to all recorded scores, including the exceptional one.
With these updates, the WHS ensures that your Handicap Index remains a fair reflection of your demonstrated skill level, providing you with a handicap that accurately represents your current performance.
Feature: Nick Price
Quick Facts:
- Born: January 28, 1957, Durban, South Africa
- Major Championships: 3 – 2 USPGA Championships, 1 Open Championships
- Total Professional Wins: 48
- PGA Tour Wins: 24
- Vardon Trophy: Won twice – presented to the player with the lowest scoring average with a minimum of 60 competitive rounds on The PGA Tour
- Senior PGA Tour Wins: 4
- Official World Golf Ranking – # 1 Ranked player for 47 weeks
- He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2003
- One of Southern Africa’s most talented players is Nick Price.
I use the term Southern Africa, because Nick is one of the very few golfers to have ever represented two countries at the World Cup of Golf, in 1978 under the flag of South Africa, and again in 1993 under that of Zimbabwe, and then to add a final geographic flourish, he was part of the 3-player winning Southern Africa team at the Alfred Dunhill Challenge in 1993.
This is one of those types of facts loved by trivia buffs, but it reveals an even more interesting back story to one of golf’s nicest people.
The story of Nick’s ‘complex’ heritage, starts with his birth to British parents in Durban South Africa. The Price family then moved to Rhodesia, and Nick’s first foray into professional golf was in 1977 on the pro tour in South Africa, which then known as the Sunshine Circuit. In 1979 he won his first tournament in South Africa by annexing the Asseng Challenge, and followed this, in 1980, with a first win on the European Tour at the Swiss Open.
A glimmer of Price’s potential to become a world superstar, was evident when he finished second to Tom Watson at the 1982 Open Championship, having held a 3-strokes lead with 6 holes to play.
Having got his US PGA Tour card in 1982, at the tour’s qualifying school, Price provided another glimpse of future greatness, when he won the World Series of Golf at Firestone in 1983 by 4 strokes from Jack Nicklaus, to become the first wire-to wire winner of this tournament, which then carried a 10-year exemption to the US Tour, as did the 4 Majors.
Despite being acknowledged as one of the purest ball strikers of his generation, and having a number of tour wins, it would not be until almost a decade later that Price would finally come into his own on golf’s greatest stages, when over a sublime 3-year period he would win 3 Majors – The USPGA Championship in 1992, and the Open Championship and a second USPGA title in 1994.
For those who follow the Majors, who will ever forget his eagle putt of over 50 feet at Turnberry, which would put him into a 1 shot lead playing the 72nd hole, which he would duly par, to beat Jesper Parnevick into second place.
Not the ‘loud’, or quotable type – Price would generally let his clubs do the talking, but he was prompted by the emotion of his winning of The Open at Turnberry in 1994 to say:
“In 1982 I had my left hand on this trophy. In 1988 I had my right hand on the trophy. Now I finally have it in both hands”.
Over the same period, Price topped the PGA Tour money list in 1993 and 1994, and set new earnings record for each season, and spent 43 weeks at number one in the Official World Golf Rankings, and in 2003, Price was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
As a further testament to his consistency, in 1993 and 1997, Price was awarded the Vardon Trophy, which is given annually by the PGA of America to the player with the lowest adjusted scoring average with a minimum of 60 rounds.
In 2005, he was given the Bob Jones Award, the highest honour bestowed by the USGA in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf, and in 2011, he was bestowed with the Old Tom Morris Award, the highest honour given by the GCSAA to an individual who; “through a continuing lifetime commitment to the game of golf has helped to mould the welfare of the game, in a manner and style exemplified by Old Tom Morris.”
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EQUIPMENT GOLF GEAR AND APPAREL NEWS
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Quote of the Month
“I look into eyes, shake their hand, pat their back, and wish them luck, but I am thinking, I am going to bury you.” – Seve Ballesteros
Swing easy!
The Handicaps Team