Great information guys. Another call has confirmed the above. The USGA SUGGESTS but does not require the standard allocation. Thank you Hoosier for your input here. The two links you provided are exactly what I was looking for. I think I have enough information to go to the board and set up a committee.

Nice! I know it has been a long time since ours was last done. I also know the members all have opinions about what hole should be what. It is just one of those things in golf where not everyone will agree, but you just do the best you can.

For those that care, the USGA has come up with some new methodology regarding a formula called "Stroke Hole Allocation By Need" whereby you take two groups of golfers, one with low handicaps (say under 5), and one with high handicaps (say over 20) and use the average differntial in score, hole by hole to determine your hole handicaps. I am going to use this method for some of the data. This has been very interesting research to say the least.

I found out last night that the membership is all over the board on which holes they think should be the lower handicap holes and which holes are the higher handicap holes. The process will be interesting to say the least.

UPDATE: Got the board approval to form a committee to re-handicap the holes! My plan is to present all of my data to the committee, make my recommedation and let the committee make the final decision. Right now, I am leaning towards recommending rotating the holes BACK to FRONT. I have my theroy on the order of the holes, but we will see what the committee thinks. With all of the legwork basically done, hopefully, we will be able to accomplish this in one meeting.

I like your thinking, good luck with it.

While not mandatory, having the hole handicaps alternate between back and front nines makes Match Play, where you may not finnish all 18, a bit more fair.. Say there is a 6 stroke difference between competitors handicaps but all the hard holes are on the back. The weaker player may not get to use any of his strokes before the match is over.

My home course has separate slope and ratings for the front and back nines and also has different hole handicaps for stroke and match play. Not sure why, but it does.

Assignment of handicap number to the individual holes is for the purpose of allocating strokes in match play so if you make all your first 6 handicap holes all on the back side it could give a distinct advantage to the guy with higher handicap in a match. If there is a difference of six or more strokes between two guy's handicaps then the high handicapper is getting 6 strokes on the back before getting a stroke on front. I am guessing that is the reason that strokes are allocated alternately between front and back to insure that strokes are allocated on both front and back side as evenly as possible. I can't think of any other reason to have a handicap number for a hole??? I guess if I were on a committee making this decision, I would be strongly in favor of having the handicap holes evenly divided between front and back, in your case probably would have the odd holes on back and evens on front though.

Thanks for posting what you are doing it is really interesting. Good luck with that committee and don't worry, whatever you do, someone will be pleased and someone will be mad. If by chance you do please everyone, please share your secret with us. http://www.thehackersparadise.com/fo...es/biggrin.png

Maybe because each golfer is thinking in terms of their own game and not of the membership at large. Most people think that the number one handicap hole is the "hardest" hole with little or no thought into what the actual purpose of the handicap number is.

It is simply just a ranking of where strokes should be given in match play.

I would have thought the opposite - having say holes 12-17 as the numbers 1-6 handicap holes would give an advantage to the lower handicapper.

In a matchplay scenario there is no way you'd want all the lower handicap holes on one side due to the reasons already suggested.

From memory there is no stipulation in the rules saying the hardest hole should be stroke index 1, only that there be an even spread on each nine. Most courses I've played do however have them almost in order if difficulty but with also having the even spread which may sometimes require that say the 2nd hardest hole be rated the 3rd to keep the spread.

Interesting topic and I look forward to following it.


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My thinking is the low handicapper would have to build a huge lead on the front because of giving six strokes on the back. You could be right, I suppose a lot depends on circumstances of the match. Either way would seem to be a good argument for balancing the handicap strokes front and back.