08
April
2022
England Golf's Richard Flint and Gemma Hunter gave a fascinating insight into the latest on the World Handicap System and iGolf in a GCMA Hot Topics webinar... England Golf will develop training programmes to help handicap committees with the World Handicap System. In a GCMA Hot Topics webinar, England Golf’s chief operating officer Richard Flint, and Gemma Hunter, head of handicapping and course rating, gave viewers an update on progress with WHS and iGolf, the governing body’s independent golfer platform. Speaking of the vital role handicap committees play within clubs, Hunter talked about the process of continuous education as WHS continued to bed in – and outlined the support structures, thorough county and regional handicap advisors, that were there to assist clubs. “Obviously, the more questions you are asked, the more your knowledge starts to improve as well,” she said, before adding: “We’re looking to develop some form of handicap training for handicap committees and handicap secretaries during this year, hopefully for delivery towards the back end of 2022. We’re looking to do that towards the end of this year. “With all that said, there is a huge amount of education and resources for you as golf clubs and information that you can share with your members on the England Golf website.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtZ4IhMIOdo Looking at WHS as a whole, some of the headline figures included: More than 423,000 golfers had registered with My England Golf, with 400,000 having downloaded the My EG app 8 million rounds were submitted through the England Golf platform in 2021, with 5.5 million of those competition scores – an increase of 12 per cent on 2019. 2.3 million were general play scores 94 per cent of submitted scores were 18-hole rounds The average WHS index for a male golfer was 17.1 and 27.2 for female players The number of 54 handicappers stood at 2,250, a figure Hunter said busted a misconception about the number of players playing under the highest figure possible Hunter looked at the controversial Playing Conditions Calculation (PCC) and revealed anonymised data summaries had been shared with R&A and USA researchers which worked out to around 12 million scores across England, Ireland and Wales. “The PCC calculation is currently under review,” she said. “It will still exist but they are looking to scale the PCC to a level that is more reflective of the conditions people face and the scores being returned. “The biggest challenge with this is to try and find something that is acceptable around the world because there is one single calculation. It's not something where we can have a slightly different setting to another part of the world. There is one calculation and one set of settings for the whole of the world. “We have looked at our data and we've identified that, around about 92% of the time, the PCC remains at zero, which is far, far, far too conservative than what we need it to be. We don't want it to be to the extremes of... Please LOGIN to read the full article.
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