Version 2.0
Copyright 2004 Harvey Yen Lee
Here is a quick summary of what is displayed on the main window:
| Column Heading | Description |
| Date | The date of your round of golf |
| Course Name | The name of the course you played |
| Side | All, Front, or Back |
| Tees | The tees that you played at for the round |
| Rating | The course rating for tees that you played from |
| Slope | The course slope for the tees that you played from |
| Score | Your adjusted gross score for the round |
| HD | Handicap Differential: The value used to determine your handicap for the round. Takes into account your score, rating, and slope |
| Handicap | Your handicap as of the current entry |
| HRank | Handicap Rank: Rank, if applicable, of that round towards current handicap |
GolfHandicap is a tool you can use to compute your USGA Handicap. It is friendly for both 18 hole rounds and 9 hole rounds.
Windows 95/98, NT, 2000, XP
Open GolfHandicap and enter your golf scores by using the Edit/Add New Round menu selection. Alternatively,
you can use the "+" button to bring up the same dialog.
The following are prompted by the Add New Round dialog:
1) date of your round
2) the course name (max 32 characters, blank spaces permitted)
3) the side you played (max 8 characters): If you played all 18 holes, enter "all". If you played
only 9 holes, enter "front" or "Front" or "back" or "Back". GolfHandicap will key off this entry to determine if
you played 9 or 18 holes. Any other entry besides "front", "Front", "back" or "Back"; will
assume that you played 18 holes. The number of holes played is important for purposes of computing the handicap.
4) the tees you played (max 12 characters): This is purely for informational purposes so you don't have
to visually refer to the rating and slope to remember what tees you played.
5) the course rating: This can usually be found on the scorecard or inside the clubhouse, determined by
the USGA. For 9 hole rounds, the rating is usually available for each side. If you absolutely cannot find the
rating for the side that you played, just divide the 18 hole rating in half. If you only play 9 holes,
then be sure to enter a rating appropriate for 9 holes. This is one of the most common errors with
GolfHandicap. A 9 hole rating should definitely be less than 50, and an 18 hole rating should definitely
be greater than 50.
6) the course slope: This can usually be found on the scorecard or inside the clubhouse, determined by the
USGA. The slope is different for each 9 hole side of a course, so if you played a 9 hole round, be sure
to get the correct slope for the side that you played.
7) your score: also known as the adjusted gross score
Enter as many rounds as you've played. GolfHandicap supports a maximum of 512 rounds of golf. After you enter 512
rounds of golf, you should manually delete entries to keep the total number less than or equal to 512.
If you do not enter your scores in chronological order, GolfHandicap will sort them for you. When you save your
work, GolfHandicap will save your scores in chronological order in the .gh file.
As soon as you've entered "OK" on the Add New Round dialog, your round will show up in the main window.
Everything you entered in the dialog will be displayed, in addition to the following:
HD (Handicap Differential): This is the value that is used for handicap determination for that round. It
is computed based on the following formula:
HD = (score - rating) x 113 / slope
The HD factors in difficulty of the course (rating and slope) against your score. In other words, shooting 80 at
an easy course does not (and should not) count equally towards your handicap as a difficult course. A difficult
course would have a higher rating and a higher slope, which would result in a lower HD than at an easier course.
Handicap: This is your handicap as of the current entry. GolfHandicap automatically sorts all rounds in
chronological order, so you can track your handicap over time. It takes 5 full rounds of golf (90 holes) to determine
your handicap, so you will not have one until 90 holes have been played.
A golf handicap is not based on a simple average of your scores. It is an attempt to determine how good you can
play. Your handicap is determined by the lowest of your HDs. The number of rounds used is based on how many full
rounds you've played.
Use the following table to determine the number of acceptable scores:
| Rounds | Acceptable Scores |
| 5 or 6 | Lowest 1 |
| 7 or 8 | Lowest 2 |
| 9 or 10 | Lowest 3 |
| 11 or 12 | Lowest 4 |
| 13 or 14 | Lowest 5 |
| 15 or 16 | Lowest 6 |
| 17 | Lowest 7 |
| 18 | Lowest 8 |
| 19 | Lowest 9 |
| 20 or more | Lowest 10 |
First determine the number of rounds that will be counted based on the number of full rounds you've played using the above table.
Average the HDs from these lowest rounds.
Multiply the average by 0.96
Delete all numbers after the tenths digit. This is your handicap.
HRank (Handicap Rank): This shows the rounds, in ranked order, that apply towards your handicap. This is useful to quickly see what your best scores are. Note that if you play more than one round in a day, then GolfHandicap will show the best HRank for all rounds played that day, even if one round should not have qualified. Rest assured, the bad round(s) do not factor in the computation of the Handicap, but there is a bug with the display of HRank if there is more than one round played in a day.
A full round implies 18 holes of golf. Therefore if you play a lot of nine hole rounds, then you need to play
at least 10 nine hole rounds to get a handicap, and a maximum of 40 nine hole rounds are used to determine your
handicap. GolfHandicap counts a nine hole round (noted by "front" or "back" under the "Side"
column) as 0.5 round.
Let's say you play a good mixture of 9 and 18 hole rounds and you've played enough golf to apply 4 full rounds
(or 8 nine hole rounds) towards your handicap. Let's say your 7 lowest HDs are from nine hole rounds, and then
your next lowest HD is from an 18 hole round. If you applied the 18 hole round to your handicap, you would actually
be applying 4.5 full rounds. I haven't found a specific rule on how to handle this, so GolfHandicap will apply
0.5 of the 18 hole HD towards your handicap, giving you 4.0 full rounds applied to your handicap.
After you've entered all your scores, you'll want to save your work. GolfHandicap will save your work in a .gh file. GolfHandicap resorts all of your entered rounds in chronological order in the .gh file. The output file format is a simple ASCII tab-delimited format that you can print out and view hardcopy (Notepad recommended, WordPad has some formatting problems). You can also Print directly from GolfHandicap by selecting the File/Print menu option.
After your next round of golf, double-click on your .gh file, which will open GolfHandicap again. You can then enter additional rounds.
If at any time you've entered anything you'd like to delete, then highlight the selection(s) in the main window
and delete them using the Edit/Delete Round menu option or press the "-" button. After highlighting the
selection(s), you can also right-click to bring up a pop-up menu. From here, you can select Delete Round.
After you delete an entry or entries, all Handicaps and HRanks are resorted in chronological order and recomputed
based on the new set of rounds.
If you have a lot of data to enter, you may want to do enter data external from GolfHandicap just by editing
the .gh file database using Notepad. All you need to do is adhere to the column definitions and ensure
that everything is tab-delimited. Any line that begins with "*" will be considered a comment but will
be lost when you save the file.
Required entries for user entered lines are: Date, Course Name, Side, Tees, Rating, Slope, and Score.
The software will automatically compute the HD, Handicap, and HRank and write these out to the .gh file
when you save the file.
It is important that the Date is entered with the mm/dd/yy convention to be consistent with entries
entered using the GolfHandicap Edit/Add New Round method. Leading zeros should be entered for mm, dd,
or yy. For example, May 9, 2001 would be entered as "05/09/01", not as "5/9/1". The software will
accept such an entry, but the chronological sort will not work correctly.
Each time GolfHandicap reads in a .gh file, all entries are resorted chronologically and Handicaps and HRanks are
recomputed. If you like the content and ordering of the data, simply save the .gh file.
If you've reached the maximum of 512 rounds, then you may want to delete the oldest rounds by editing the .gh file
or by using the Edit/Delete Round option.
Algorithms are based on data from The USGA Handicap Home Page
You can reach me at: fightinghippos10@yahoo.com