Global Handicaps May Be Coming...

I'm not sure how much of an issue this is for the sport unless there have been accusations of sandbagging when R&A and USGA officials whap it around at elite courses, but whether anyone was clamoring for it or not, it seems there will be a unified global handicapping system.

John Paul Newport in the WSJ:

“The handicap system is effectively a fourth set of rules,” said John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s point man for the initiative. Not all golfers keep a handicap, of course, but for those who do the score-posting requirements enforce a rules-like discipline. Yet those rules deviate from country to country. “We feel it would benefit the game enormously, and add to its enjoyment, if golfers everywhere had a single, portable handicap number that worked the same wherever they traveled,” Bodenhamer said.

More important was this update on the rules simplification effort, which unlike the 2003 ball study, has not been relegated to a file cabinet:

Simultaneously, the USGA and the R&A are working on a rules simplification project that would have a similarly unifying impact. “Shorter, simpler and less legalistic is the goal,” Bodenhamer said. If successfully completed, the new rules code would roll out in the same time frame as the World Handicap System and make extensive use of pictures, graphics and new modes of presentation using modern technology. The underlying principles would remain fundamentally the same, but the rules themselves would look and feel entirely different. Also on the horizon are clear new translations of the existing rules in multiple languages.