From Brent Kelley,
Your Guide to Golf.
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Figure your course handicap, then compare your course handicap to the "handicap" line on the scorecard.

There should be a row (usually two rows, actually, one for men and one for women) on every scorecard labeled "Handicap," and the numbers on that row represent the ranking of the holes for handicap purposes.

If your course handicap is "1," then you get a stroke only on the No. 1 handicap hole. If your course handicap is "2," then you get strokes on handicap holes Nos. 1 and 2, and so on.

So if your course handicap is 18, you get a stroke on every hole. If it's 9, you get a stroke on the top 9 handicap holes, but not on the bottom nine. If it's 27, you get one stroke on every hole, plus another stroke on the top nine handicap holes.

Got it? (If you don't "got it," a more in-depth explanation can be found here.)

Now double-check with your handicapping committee, because some of them do their own rankings of holes based on a comparison of the scores of scratch golfers and bogey golfers over a set period of time. It's possible that your home course's handicap committee has handicap rankings that differ from those on the scorecard.

Back to Golf Handicap FAQ homepage