This question surfaces in every social golf club eventually, usually about ten minutes after someone wins by six. Where do the handicaps come from, and are they fair?
Start with the honest part. Official GA handicaps in Australia are issued through affiliated golf clubs. If your social club is not affiliated, you cannot issue one and you should not imply you have. What you can run is a club handicap: a number that means something inside your comp and nothing at all outside it.
The three ways clubs actually do it
Use the handicaps members already hold. Simplest, if most of your field are members somewhere. It is consistent and somebody else maintains it. The gap is coverage — the bloke who only ever plays with you has no number, so you are inventing one for him regardless.
Run your own, off your own rounds. Calculate a handicap from the scores members post in your comps. This is where most established social clubs end up, and it is the fairest option if you play the same few courses. It needs a run of rounds before it means anything: three is the bare minimum and it does not really settle until eight or ten.
Nominate and adjust. New player names a number, the committee moves it if he wins twice. Fine for twelve mates. Falls over the moment there is prize money and thirty players.
The problems you will hit are not the maths
- The new member with no history. Give him a starting number, call it provisional out loud, and say it will move. A handicap cut after a win is a normal part of the system — but only if you said so before the win.
- The bloke who plays twice a year. His handicap is a fossil. Either leave him out of the season ladder or accept it and stop worrying about it.
- The suspicion. Every club has one player everyone reckons is off too many. Usually they are wrong. Occasionally they are not. The defence against both is a visible record: when members can see every round that fed a number, the conversation dies on its own.
Write down three things, once
How a new member gets a starting handicap. How many rounds before it recalculates. Who can override it by hand, and on what grounds. Any of those left unsaid becomes a bar argument in about eighteen months, and it will be a worse argument for having no answer on paper.
The line worth not blurring
A handicap you calculate yourself is for your comp. It is not a GA handicap, it will not get anyone into an open or a pennant side, and a club that lets that stay vague is setting a member up for an awkward conversation at a course that expects the real thing. Say it plainly once and it never becomes a problem.