Man, figuring out Tiger Woods’ golf handicap was a bit of a rabbit hole, but a fun one! Here’s how I went about it:
Digging In
First, I hit up Google, just plain and simple searching “Tiger Woods handicap.” I figured the internet would have the answer right away. I found some articles and forum discussions, but nothing seemed super concrete. It was a lot of “he’s probably around this” or “back in his prime, it was estimated at that.” Nothing I could really sink my teeth into.
Getting Specific
I realized I needed to get more specific. So, I started looking into how golf handicaps are even calculated. Turns out, it’s a whole system based on your recent scores, the difficulty of the courses you played, and some other fancy math stuff. Way more complicated than I thought!
I don’t remember the very detail of it, but I will try my best to list them for you guys:
- Course Rating: This is a number that represents how difficult a course is for a scratch golfer (a golfer with a handicap of 0).
- Slope Rating: the difficulty of a course for a bogey golfer (a golfer with a handicap of around 20).
- Score Differential:Then, for each round you play, you calculate something called a “score differential.”
The Problem
Here’s where I hit a wall. You need a golfer’s actual scores to calculate their handicap. And those scores are keep very secret and private, I had to accept that I wasn’t going to find a definitive, official answer to Tiger’s current handicap.
The (Kind Of) Answer
Even though I couldn’t calculate it myself, I did find some pretty educated guesses from people who know way more about golf than I do. Most of them figured Tiger, at his absolute best, was probably playing with a handicap somewhere around +6 to +8. A plus handicap doesn’t make sence in my mind at first. but after I google it, that means he’s so good, he’s actually better than a scratch golfer. Basically, he should be giving strokes to other players, not the other way around. Crazy, right?
What I Learned
So, while I couldn’t give you the exact number, I learned a ton about golf handicaps and just how unbelievably good Tiger Woods is at golf. It’s a whole different level of skill!
