World Handicap System

As part of the implementation in Australia of the World Handicap System (WHS), effective Tuesday 7 May 2019, the existing Daily Scratch Rating (DSR) formulas will be replaced with the new WHS daily rating formulas.

• No action at all is required of clubs to support the changeover to the WHS daily rating formulas.  The changeover is simply something that will happen in the background – the only work required to make the change is to the internal GOLF Link software.
• In the short term the daily rating system in Australia will continue to be known as Daily Scratch Rating (DSR).  The WHS terminology for daily rating is ‘Playing Conditions Calculation’ (or PCC).  The new PCC terminology will take effect in Australia when full implementation of the WHS occurs in late-January or early-February 2020.
• The lower limit of the DSR will remain unchanged at one stroke below the Scratch Rating.  The upper limit will be three strokes above the Scratch Rating (which is a change from the existing four-stroke upper limit).
• The new daily rating system is more conservative than Australia’s existing DSR system.  As a result, daily ratings at most clubs are expected to be less likely to move around after 7 May than they have previously.  The new formulas have been deliberately designed in this way.  One of the anticipated outcomes of the more conservative approach is that equity in competition results patterns across the seasons is likely to become slightly more consistent, which Golf Australia supports.  Currently the competitive bias can shift slightly towards higher markers in the summer months in most parts of Australia, and slightly towards the lower markers in the winter months in most parts of Australia.
• The WHS daily rating formulas have a similar degree of mathematical complexity as the current DSR formulas.  They have been designed by a global group of statisticians known as the World Handicap Research Team (WHRT).  Australia is represented on the WHRT.  The WHRT believes that the best daily rating outcomes can only be achieved by detailed formulas.