Average Handicap

I was told that less than 50% of the US golfers break 100, if they count all strokes. I know many casual golfers, who play once or twice a month, do not have handicaps of memberships anyplace. Some folks are good, most are happy with anything under 100.

HDGoose said:

I was told that less than 50% of the US golfers break 100, if they count all strokes. I know many casual golfers, who play once or twice a month, do not have handicaps of memberships anyplace. Some folks are good, most are happy with anything under 100.

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I honestly have a hard time believing that. The only guys i know breaking 100 are ones that playing or played a lot at one point. Plus there are a lot of guys i know that think they're a 100 and they're about a 125 due to all the rehits and such. Like i hit par, and they say bogey and I'm like didn't you hit 2 in the water?! :confused2:

There is simply way too many who don't carry a cap and way too many of those who don't follow the rules in order to ever get an accurate answer. As far as breaking 100 I think that too is something (due to the same reasons) that can never be answered in fact. I also think breaking 100 is very misleading when it comes to comparing that with handicap. Course yardage, rating, and slope make a big difference for the significance of breaking 100 as it may apply towards handicap. That's not a knock on anyone for accomplishing that but its just that shooting a 96 on one course is not quite the same as it is on another so you really cant use that alone as a means to try to determine handicap averages at all. Truthfully, when one is spraying balls all over and the course in question is allowing no or very little penalty for doing so, that is a big difference just as another doesn't offer nearly the same forgiveness..

In New Zealand all registered handicap golfers are on a single database using the GHIN method. My mate has a Handicap Index of 19.6 which puts him just in the top 50% of registered handicap golfers. If the huge number of non-handicap golfers in NZ was somehow added to this database and they were honest about their scoring I would imagine the average handicap would be closer to 30.