How’s your game?

We don’t mean ‘How do you think you have been playing.’ We’re asking how you’ve actually been performing. There’s often a difference between feel and real.

The good news is, your answer doesn’t have to come down to guesswork. Performance, after all, can be measured. The easiest way to do so is by keeping a handicap index.

Posting your scores doesn’t just provide you with a snapshot in time. It helps paint a broader picture. It shows how you are progressing, or regressing (hey, it can happen to the best of us). It also allows you to place your game in context. Dig deeper into the data, and you can see how you compare to other golfers. 

Are you better than average? This, too, can be, measured. The average handicap index for male golfers in this country is 14.2. For female golfers, the average is 28.7.

In the United States today, more than 3.2 million golfers keep a handicap index, up from 2.6 million in 2020. Just as participation in the game is growing, so is participation in GHIN, the handicapping system overseen by the USGA, which keeps adding to GHIN’s capabilities while making GHIN itself easier to use.

Take, for instance, a new 30-day free trial for the GHIN app. You can now download the app at no cost (previously, you could only use the app if you were already signed up for a handicap index) and start posting scores. The clock doesn’t start ticking on your 30-day free trial until you’ve posted 54 holes, at which point GHIN will give you your estimated handicap range (within 5 strokes). You can keep posting scores throughout your 30-day free trial. When your trial expires, you can then sign up for a handicap index on GHIN (the cost is usually about $50-$60 contingent upon your club or local golf association’s pricing), which is good for a year.

In the last three months, more than 86,000 golfers have taken advantage of the 30-day free trial, and a more than 27,000 have gone on to sign up for a handicap index on GHIN, enjoying features that are more expansive than ever, such as enhanced shot-tracking, on-course GPS, and color-coded maps of greens that show which way putts break. More bells and whistles are coming later this year and next, including gamification features that will allow golfers to compare their net scores with others, based on their handicap on the course they are playing.

As much as golfers play by feel, surveys show that most also consider themselves data-driven. 

“So we’re also looking at improved stats and analysis of your game and how you compare to golfers in your handicap range or golfers in a targeted handicap range,” says Tom Padula, the USGA’s director of product management, GHIN apps. “The emphasis is, how can we help you understand your game better based on the information you give to us?”

How’s your game? No need to answer right this minute. We’ll check back after you’ve posted a few more scores.

Josh Sens

Golf.com Editor

A golf, food and travel writer, Josh Sens has been a GOLF Magazine contributor since 2004 and now contributes across all of GOLF’s platforms. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Sportswriting. He is also the co-author, with Sammy Hagar, of Are We Having Any Fun Yet: the Cooking and Partying Handbook.