It’s always amused me that the winners of the USA’s Major League Baseball are gifted the moniker of world champions, when only one team in the 30 participants is from outside the USA – and they’re in Canada!
Well, it appears England is getting in on the act following the introduction of the World Handicap System (WHS). As I understood it, the premise of the concept was that it would be a universal – well, worldwide anyway – system whereby golfers could enter their scores from wherever they were playing, from Aberdeen to Zanzibar.
But, from my own personal experience, the only scores I can enter outside of my home club are from other English clubs, courtesy of the EGU app. Having been lucky enough to travel recently – to France, Scotland and Spain – I was looking forward to posting my scores.
And that’s what I might as well have done, posted them, because I had to take a screenshot of my scores, which was then emailed to my home club with the request that somebody there might upload them.
If my experience is repeated across the sport, WHS has got lucky with the pandemic. The lack of travel has signally prevented a golfing hue and cry. But the travel door is starting to creak open again and once people start stepping through in their droves, there will be an expectation that WHS will work correctly.
If it is to fulfil its true potential, surely it needs a portal from where one can enter scores from any club in the world.
The idea of a business magazine for the golf industry, first came to founder – and publisher – Michael Lenihan when he visited La Manga Club in 1996. With a publishing background, and having just sold the rights to Football Management – a B2B magazine he launched in 1993 – he stumbled across a copy of Golf Enterprise Europe. And the rest, as they say, is history.
A year later, to coincide with the Ryder Cup at Valderrama in September 1997, the first edition of Golf Management Europe was published, and in 2020 – to reflect the growing global reach of the magazine – the word ’Europe’ was removed from the title.
An all too often frustrated golfer, Michael has interviewed some of the best operators in world golf, and has had the privilege to visit, and play, some worldclass golf courses. He divides his time between the UK and Spain, and has membership at Felixstowe Ferry Golf Club in Suffolk.
United Kingdom
A one-year subscription (four issues) to the printed edition of Golf Management delivered to a single UK address.
We accept payment via debit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and credit card including American Express, MasterCard and Visa.
International
A one-year subscription (four issues) to the printed edition of Golf Management delivered to a single International address.
We accept payment via debit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and credit card including American Express, MasterCard and Visa.
Sign up to regular news updates, and to be notified when the Summer 2026 edition is published.
