Handicap's UK versus USA...

I use a scorecard app on my iphone, it's called GolfShot and after a round it emails you the scorecard and adds the round to your stats.

Last night I noticed something on the scorecard that was emailed to me, it has a USA style course rating and slope rating for my home course. I checked the other scorecards and I got info for rounds off the yellow tee's and the white tee's.

This kicked off a google search about US handicaps and one thing lead to another and soon I was deep in calculations.

Now I know full well that only my real Congu handicap counts, but... In my vainglory I have calculated other handicaps...

I decided I will have an official handicap at the club and a unofficial handicap, call it a society handicap that I will play off for society/forum meets and matches that get played for a few quid between friends and strangers. This will make me feel less of a bandit in casual matches because at the moment I will not play anyone for money off 25, it's just not right, I do not feel comfortable doing it.

Also I was interested to see how my USGA handicap would come out compared to my Congu handicap so here are the results...

Official Congu Handicap (All qualifying comps off medal tee's) = 25.4
USGA comp only handicap {(All qualifying comps off medal tee's) 2 lowest cards from the 7 comps played} = 23.0

UK Society handicap (All 2010 recorded scorecards all tee's) = 17.5
USGA Society handicap {(All 2010 recorded scorecards all tee's) 6 lowest cards from the 16 played} = 16.0

I find it very interesting that because USGA handicaps can use cards from general play + match play and only use the best cards from up to your last 20 rounds that they do come out lower than uk handicaps.

*disclaimer

This assumes that the GolfShot app is accurate in it's course and slope rating of my home club!!!

The course rating seams fine as 69 off the white tee's tallies with our normal CSS, and 68 for the yellows would therefore seam feasible. Where I'm unsure is on the slope rating, on websites it suggests that the average is 112 and uses 113 in the calculations, GolfShot has our slope rating at quite a high 120 for the yellows and 122 off the whites which seams very high if the average is 112 ish!!!

However I have nothing else to confirm/disprove it by and even if I use 112 the result still comes out lower than the UK version, so as a piece of fun it stands :D