Golf course handicap calculator
Your Handicap Index goes everywhere with you; your Course Handicap is how many strokes it's worth on the tees you're playing today. Enter your index and the tees' Course Rating, Slope Rating and par, which are on the scorecard. Don't know your index yet? Work it out with our handicap index calculator.
Your course handicap
Course Handicap
Playing Handicap
Net par (your target score)
How it works
Course Handicap = Handicap Index × (Slope Rating ÷ 113) + (Course Rating − par), rounded to the nearest whole number. A Slope of 113 is a course of average difficulty for a bogey golfer compared with a scratch golfer; harder tees have a higher Slope and give you more strokes. For 9 holes, the index is halved first and the 9-hole Course Rating and par are used.
Playing Handicap is the Course Handicap times the allowance for the format, which keeps competitions fair: 95% in individual stroke play, 100% in singles match play, 85% in four-ball stroke play and 90% in four-ball match play. In a casual round with friends, just use your Course Handicap.
Where you get strokes: every hole on the scorecard has a stroke index from 1 (hardest) to 18. With a handicap of 12 you get one stroke on the holes with stroke index 1 to 12; above 18 you get a second stroke on the hardest holes. A plus handicap gives strokes back, starting from stroke index 18.