Now in Great Britain & Ireland, the way governing bodies administer a part of the Rules of Handicapping is also open to variation. If you\u2019re in Scotland, Wales, or Ireland, clubs have the power to alter the Playing Handicap Allowances<\/a> that are used in competitions.<\/p>\n In England, they don\u2019t<\/a>.<\/p>\n Golf Ireland are also piloting a Strokes Gained Ratings System<\/a> that could be the primary qualification method for all its men\u2019s and women\u2019s championships from next year.<\/p>\n Using scoring data returned to Golf Ireland\u2019s WHS Clubhouse platform, players will receive an Adjusted Strokes Gained rating driven by their scores over a rolling two-year period.<\/p>\n The governing body said it will measure how many strokes better or worse a golfer performs in each round compared to an average championship-level player, accounting for course difficulty and playing conditions.<\/p>\n Launching the pilot at the end of March, Mark Wehrly, Championships and Rules Director at Golf Ireland, said: \u201cWhile we\u2019re committed to continuing to use both the World Amateur Golf Rankings and the World Handicap System as qualification criteria for our championships, we wanted to trial a new primary method of qualification for championships that was developed specifically for that purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n This follows England Golf\u2019s own Championship Entry policy<\/a> that can deny some participants a place in certain tournaments based on the number of general play scores and the differences between those and a player\u2019s competition scores.<\/p>\n They\u2019re all examples of handicapping rules being tweaked to suit regional circumstances but, with Golf GB&I charged as the body which replaced CONGU in administering the WHS in all the home nations, should there be a collective approach?<\/p>\n NOW LISTEN TO THE NCG GOLF PODCAST<\/p>\n ALSO AVAILABLE ON:<\/p>\n Apple Podcasts:\u00a0Listen Now<\/a><\/p>\n Spotify:\u00a0Listen Now<\/a><\/p>\n Amazon Music:\u00a0Listen Now<\/a><\/p>\n Does WHS need to be the same throughout GB&I?<\/p>\n In an episode of The NCG Golf Podcast<\/a>, Tom Irwin and I discussed the issue and I said: \u201cI know Playing Handicaps only apply to the competition, they don\u2019t apply to the actual scores that go into the WHS.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I do think it\u2019s a bit strange when you say, \u2018we\u2019re going to have a universal handicap system\u2019 and not only in other parts of the world is it done differently but it\u2019s also 1777890314 done differently within GB&I, where we\u2019ve got the same software and we\u2019ve got a group that\u2019s supposed to be there to administer and control WHS in a unified way.<\/p>\n \u201cThen we\u2019ve got the biggest authority [England] that says, \u2018we\u2019re going a different way\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n But Irwin believes a big policy programme can be delivered differently at a local level. He explained: \u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong with a system that\u2019s unified on a macro level that is then implemented differently at a local level.<\/p>\n \u201cIf our office was a golf club and we said, \u2018we\u2019re going to have a summer competition and we\u2019re going to take everybody\u2019s indexes, but because of the course we\u2019re playing or because we know each other, what we\u2019re going to do is just use 50% of people\u2019s indexes. That would be up to us, wouldn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019d form our own informal competition committee and based on our own circumstances, and anything we wanted to achieve from that day, we\u2019d just interpret the handicap system differently. But we\u2019re using the World Handicap System as a starting point.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that\u2019s fair enough. I actually think that\u2019s pretty sensible. It\u2019s a bit like a governance, which I\u2019m involved with at school level, where you will get a model policy through from a local authority that says, \u2018this is how you should look after safeguarding\u2019 or whatever else, and then you tweak that policy to suit your own environment.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that\u2019s what good governance looks like. It\u2019s an overarching body, or in this case, a second tier of golf administration in the home unions as underlings to the R&A and USGA, saying, \u2018we are happy to delegate some of this to clubs to administer\u2019 so they can achieve contentment at club level, which is what everybody wants.\u201d<\/p>\n Now have your say on the World Handicap System<\/p>\n What do you make of the decision of the various home unions on Playing Handicap allowances? Should it have been all for one, or is it fine for England to go its own way and the rest of GB&I to go another? Let me know in the comments, email me at s.carroll@nationalclubgolfer.com<\/a>, or drop us a line on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s designed to be universal but the World Handicap System has always been implemented in slightly different ways…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-565447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/WHSscorecardpic-1024x665.jpg\")
A golfer fills out a scorecard amid a background of numbers and graphs | Source: Adobe Stock<\/p>\n