A golfer reborn the fairness of getting a new handicap ?

[golfer reborn]

I thought I would relate my experience of getting a handicap after 14 years out of the game
I used to play regularly and got down to a best handicap of 9 but took up cycling and played maybe once a year
Rekindled the passion and joined a club in Melbourne Australia.
Wanted to get a handicap and was told I had to put in 3 cards .
I was still fairly rusty having played only a handful of rounds but though at least I would have the comfort of a high starting handicap to work on and get down
Round one at my home course Cranbourne was 99 the a 98 .
I played a fair bit better and cracked 90 with an 89
I was expecting a handicap between 20-22 .
To the amusement of my golf buddies who we're looking at me smiling when I went to pro shop to get my handicap I was put off 14.4
I was told only my best card was looked at and then a bad hole adjusted and in Australia your handicap is arrived at by multiplying the raw result by .93
The kicker in the story is that I was told my maximum handicap for the next 20 rounds is 14.4 and that it can only go down.
If I have many rounds of poor golf it does not change but one stellar round could see my handicap plummet !
Happy to be playing again and like the challenge of improvement but it seemed to be made just that bit harder than I anticipated
Anyway whoever said that the game was fair

 

[JoeyJoeJo]

Wow, that seems pretty harsh!!

I only got mine this year and was told the system here is 3 cards, max at a hole is double bogey, and then average of the 3scores per hole, not per round, totalled make up the the score.

I carded as high as 111 so was expecting 28 but because the high scores were from 8s and 9s, they were negated by the max double arrangement.
What they did say was that they can do a local adjustment, maybe it's the same with you and the hcap committee took your previous in to account..?
Just speculating but sounds like you have a high std to play to, good luck with it!

 

[golfer reborn]

Last registered handicap was 11 in 1999!!!!!!!
Having played probably 20 rounds since then I would have thought it probably was not terribly relevant but what would I know
At least my mates are amused !