The Long Game tracks the Handicap Index progress of three Golf Digest editors of different abilities throughout the 2024 golf season. Catch up on last month’s story.
The comedian and TV host John Oliver has a line about how the only social-media platform that really matters these days is the comments section of Venmo.
Oliver meant it as a joke, but from a golf perspective, he’s not far off. More than just an accounting of bets won and lost, golfers’ transaction histories are a decent barometer of how accurately their handicap reflects their games. Too many losses and it’s probably too low. Too many wins and that’s when the “sandbagger” tag gets tossed around. It’s only when you break even that it seems about right.
In the absence of a marked drop in my Handicap Index—my goal every year, but especially one in which I was sharing my progress as part of a season-long project—the real Handicap Index victory of 2024 has been how closely the small fluctuations in my number mirrored the state of my game. I am, for better or worse, every bit an 11.6 index, living squarely in the 80s, capable of occasional stretches of excellence, but also extended periods of incompetence. It is not nearly where I want my game to be, and I still hold firm to believing next year will be better. But if you and I were to play tomorrow, I feel confident an 11.6 Index is precisely what you’d get.
This is consistent with how my two colleagues, Luke Kerr-Dineen and Greg Gottfried, assessed their seasons when I asked for their closing thoughts on the handicap project. The two represent polar perspectives—Luke is a former college golfer with an encyclopedic knowledge of the swing, Greg is a beginner whose understanding of his tendencies is still taking shape. Neither could point to dramatic, quantifiable improvements, which is different than saying they couldn’t cite progress. More on that in a second, but first, here’s the final accounting for the season.
As for closing thoughts, let’s hear from both directly. Here’s Luke:
I’m slightly disappointed about the journey my Handicap Index took this season. It dropped down to 0.4 in a hurry, then has slowly been bleeding its way back up to 0.8. It reflected what I felt was happening to me all season: My game just wasn’t really clicking. But it’s been a blessing in disguise. A season where I’ve felt myself bump into both my ceiling and my floor has crystalized where I need to get better, and to appreciate the positives where they are. It’s validating to see that the stuff I’ve been doing with my short game is working. It saved me this season and underlined the fact that a historically problematic part of my game is on the right track. The goal for this off-season? Get longer off the tee.
And now Greg:
If you’re looking at my GHIN history, there’s little to be impressed by. I went from a 31.7 to a 32.7 to a 33.7 and now I’m all the way down to a … 32.7. But, I’ve never felt better about my golf game. Obviously, I’m not winning any PGA Tour events in the near future, but I feel relatively confident stepping up to the tee and playing around the green. I’ve made the finals of the Losers Bracket at Golf Digest’s season-long match-play tourney—what an honor—and have won multiple matches in a row. It’s tough to play while living in New York City, so this project has forced me (in a good way) to get in more golf and think more about my weaknesses on the course.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
