The high school golf landscape continuously gets more competitive each year. Coaches and players alike always look for new ways to improve their game both on and off the course.
Atascosita’s Porter High School head golf coach John Castles found an edge by encouraging his team to get TGA Memberships so they could obtain active World Handicap System (WHS) Indexes. A WHS Index is a perfect tool for measuring a golfer’s progress over time, in addition to providing many other benefits.
“I just felt like it was an opportunity for my team to establish a handicap at a young age,” Coach Castles said. “They’ll be able to carry it on with them past high school.”
There are approximately 15 million golfers worldwide who have a WHS Index and there are more than 16,000 authorized golf clubs within the United States. It’s also the only handicap system that allows entry into USGA and TGA championships.
Coach Castles noted that he previously kept track of all his players scores, but the fully automated WHS program has made things easier.
“It’s nice and organized and all online,” he said. “It’s easy to pull up a kid and see their scores for the season.”
Coach Castles was not the only one with this idea. Among others, the Frisco Liberty and DFW Homeschool golf coaches have encouraged their players to get WHS Indexes through the TGA as well.
“This will be a great way over the summer for me to be able to track their progress and see where they are playing,” said Castles. “I envision me logging in, you know, and seeing it in the summer and going, hey, by the way, great job last weekend. That’ll give me an opportunity to stay in contact with the kids and keep track of them.”
Having a WHS Index allows golfers to track their performance in real time, with new Indexes calculated daily. There are also a number of safeguards built into the WHS to protect handicap integrity, including Playing Conditions Calculation, Exceptional Score Reduction and Soft and Hard Caps to prevent dramatic upward movement of a handicap. The WHS’s greater responsiveness, combined with automatic safeguards, provides a more accurate measure of a golfer’s true handicap and progress over time.
For more information on obtaining an official WHS Index from the TGA, click here.
