News

A monthly column from the NYSGA's Executive Director, Bill Moore

April 15th marks the official beginning of the golf season - at least for those of us that have a USGA Handicap Index - as we can now post our scores for rounds played here in Upstate NY.

The handicap system has come a long way in my twenty years here at the NYSGA - and even further from its humble beginnings when a club staff member or volunteer would collect scorecards from a lockbox, use pen and paper to do the calculations, and issue handicaps to their members every couple of weeks.

The NYSGA made the decision in 1993 to take the USGA up on its offer to administer a new handicap software at our member clubs.  GHIN - The Golf Handicap Information Network - was starting to grow nationally and the NYSGA saw it as another great service that we could offer.  In doing so, we would provide the software, support, and maintenance, and the club members would just have to enter their scores into a computer in the Pro Shop.  Every month, on the 1st and 15th, the club would print a report of everyone’s Handicap Index and post it on the wall.  It was almost too easy.

In those days, the internet was at its beginnings so the software had to be physically installed at each club using floppy disks or CDs and, while the software was fairly stable, if anything went wrong we had to send someone out to fix it.  Mark Conradt, our Manager of Club Services in those days, spent over 100 days each summer on the road updating the software, setting up reports, and doing whatever else needed to be done for the software to work.  In the late 90s, there was a desire to have a national database for handicap information.  The software used a dial-up modem to send and receive the scores to a central database in New Jersey, where handicaps were stored, and you could find anyone’s handicap in the United States.  While this was great for peer review - that extra complexity in the software led to a lot of service calls when it didn’t work properly.  Most clubs finally got a high speed internet connection, fixing the issue, but we still had a couple of clubs using dial up internet to transmit scores as late as 2014!

The GHIN software now is by far the best it’s ever been - a stable platform where the vast majority of people post their scores using the GHIN mobile app on their mobile devices.  The application has reports, statistics, and even GPS built in and, nationally, over 2 million people use the software to obtain a USGA Handicap Index.  The software for administration is completely internet based, meaning I no longer have to travel around the state to troubleshoot the software.  It can all be done from my desk.  While I am sure there are a few golf professionals that miss seeing me every year, the vast majority are probably far happier that they can log on and obtain handicap information for their members from any device with internet - be it their office laptop, scoring kiosk, or mobile device.  

I believe Teugega Country Club in Rome was our first club to sign on in April of 1993, and over these last thirty years most every club in upstate New York now uses the GHIN system.  We have 258 clubs using the software, totaling 38,665 golfers.  If you are thinking about obtaining a USGA Handicap Index, you should definitely do so.  It is a great way to track your game and compete fairly with your friends and family.

Next Column: A look at Course Rating