Golf is a game of numbers, every time you intentionally strike that ball, be it your longest drive, a tap in, out of bounds, or in the water, it counts. Regardless of format, it is your score that will always matter.
Yet there are now too many golfers out there who seem to lose the ability to count once they step onto the first tee, or even worse, they simply disregard penalties or short missed putts as something they don’t have to worry about or take seriously.
The post-Covid boom, which has brought many new players to the game and undeniably been a breath of fresh air for golf, has also brought with it a new casualness to many people’s approaches to the game.
I’m all for making golf more casual in terms of dress code and formats. Through my work as a coach, I strive to make golf as accessible as possible, but I will never be casual about cheating! Because that is what failing to keep count of your score correctly is, it’s cheating. I’m sad to say, I’ve had more dealings with cheating in the last 3 years than I have had since I started playing competitively way back in 1996.
I believe the World Handicap System has likely contributed to this cheating epidemic. While designed to make the game fairer by standardising how scores are calculated across courses worldwide, many players have seized the opportunity to ‘game’ the system by over-inflating scores to protect their handicaps, or the more common one I have observed, is people putting in cards with lower scores.
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For many new to the game, the allure and ego boost of getting a low handicap quickly is simply too tempting. I regularly see golfers swinging on the range who I mentally mark as approximately a 15 handicap, who then tell me they play off 4!
What the cheaters don’t realise though is just how blatantly obvious what they are doing is to everyone else. My husband, who is also a PGA pro, recently joined England Golf’s iGolf app to get a handicap. He turned pro off scratch and received his new system handicap of +2, although he personally feels a more realistic handicap for him would be between scratch and 2.
Having the app and being able to see his friend’s scores has been a nostalgic experience of his amateur days. However, the not so nostalgic part…
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