Amid all the concern about change and the subsequent confusion over the complexity of calculations there remained a deal of consensus over the introduction of the World Handicap System (WHS).

After all, who could disagree with an attempt to ensure that, taking into account a course’s difficulty and the golfer’s abilities as reflected by their handicap, a method was devised that provided a level playing field worldwide?

It would mean, it seemed, that the golfer travelling to compete seriously abroad would be gauged on the same basis as all other event entrants while the casual player on foreign soil could strike, say, a US$5 or US€5 bet with a playing partner designated at the whim of a starting sheet with confidence that both handicaps offered a fair reflection of abilities.

However, to paraphrase the pig Napoleon in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, all handicaps are equal, but some are more equal than others.

The fact this is so became apparent as the world’s golfing population began to wriggle free from the restraining grip of COVID and travel further afield to play. Among those to gain an awareness that the handicap landscape had not been levelled by WHS was Dane Tonny Gottlieb, whose curiosity was piqued both professionally and personally when he did not receive the number of strokes he expected at courses while on a trip to Scotland last summer.

Gottlieb was more likely than most to have been acutely and quickly aware of such anomalies since he is CEO of How Many Strokes and creator of their Digital Conversion Table, an interactive display that allows players to view all their possible handicap options at a course in a matter of seconds.

“I was at St Andrews for a week. I brought the mobile calculator and at all the courses I played I noticed there was a difference,” said Gottlieb. “So I was wondering if I had done a mistake.”

A few months later after visiting Costa Navarino in Greece, Michael Lenihan, publisher of this journal contacted Gottlieb stating that he too had noticed a discrepancy, prompting the Dane to take a deep dive into both the USGA’s and The R&A’s rules of handicapping.

“I found [the rules of handicapping] from the USGA and from the R&A and then I actually discovered that there was a difference around December 2020,” Gottlieb revealed.

“The R&A made a note where they had changed the formula for the stroke index calculation and then my brain started spinning because I thought, ‘that’s a problem’. So then I started to do the math and we [How Many Strokes] did a lot of numbers, checking back and forth, and it is a real problem.

“One of the things that struck me was that if you are in the UK playing all year round there and you get adjusted in a local club then go to play a tournament outside the UK, you actually get punished.

“For example, as a 13-handicapper you should probably maybe get 14 or 15 strokes when you go to play in mainland Europe or the US or anywhere in the world, but you actually get fewer strokes than you’re supposed to. Conversely, Americans or continentals visiting the UK will have an advantage.”

The reason, it transpires, is that there are not one but two different formulas that national associations have been granted discretion to use.

The CONGU countries and others, including Vietnam, South Korea and some South American countries, do not use the option to add course rating minus par to the formula that was the – perplexed – talk of all clubhouses when WHS was on the horizon, namely dividing slope rating by 113 and then multiplying the result by the player’s handicap index.

As the rest of the world does use the option, this can make for some startling differences as Gottlieb unearthed when taking three examples – players with handicaps of one, 18 and 36 – and calculating across a wide spectrum of slope and course ratings for both formulas.

Among these was the fact that the one-handicapper receives a single shot every time under CONGU calculations, but would play off plus 11 for the easiest course and receive seven shots at the severest test under the alternative system.

This disparity using the rest of the world’s calculations that embraces the course rating minus par factor seems in keeping with what you might expect by tailoring any given day’s strokes received according to the difficulty of the course as well as handicap.

The rationale for offering two options, say The R&A, is to allow national associations to continue to support their local golfing culture, for instance whatever are their preferred formats for handicapping purposes (e.g. competition, general play, match play, stroke play, fourball).

But Gottlieb and others contend that the existence of two options within the WHS undermines its very ethos of producing global equality ahead of the first shot on the first tee.

“When I read what they (The R&A) are saying about the cultural aspect, my interpretation is that the change was too big and they didn’t want that big a change,” posited Gottlieb, who feels CONGU’s choice to ignore including the course rating minus par element is because doing so meant the new system mirrors the former system based on Standard Scratch Score more closely than the option to include it.

“In Europe we have been using this calculation that we’re using now for the last 20 years, so the change for us was not very big,” he added.

“Actually, there was no change in the way it was calculated, but the change in the UK would have been more extensive because it was a fundamental change from what you used to do.”

He believes that as recognition grows that the WHS somewhat contrarily offers two options, The R&A will ultimately conform. “I anticipate that eventually the R&A is going to accept this because it makes a lot more sense to do it this way,” said Gottlieb.

“They also have to accept at a certain point that they need to make this ‘big bang’ adjustment. You cannot do this gradually, so at some stage they have to say, ‘We’re doing it now’ and then everybody will get a different handicap overnight in the UK.”

Serendipitously, the irregularity came to light just as How Many Strokes began their expansion into the UK market, and it took technicians just a day to set up the option to base calculations without adding course rating minus par.

“The math part of the development is like second nature. The beautiful thing is right now that the customers we have in the UK, Vietnam, South Korea, places like that, when they decide to switch to the system that’s the same as the rest of the world, it’s just a switch,” he said. “Just one second and they’ll be over to the new system.”

While silicon chips in How Many Strokes’ server will offer no resistance to such a switch, there may be some upcoming mental short circuiting and even fuses blown as more and more golfers across the globe plug in to the notion that the WHS is a binary system, not the unifying conduit that is was perceived to be.

And that is even before those of us in the UK face up to the ‘big bang’ moment that Gottlieb feels is only a matter of time.