The World Handicap System (WHS) was brought in in January 2020 as The R&A and the United States Golf Association wanted a universal system which would “enable golfers of different abilities to play and compete on a fair and equal basis, in any format, on any course, anywhere around the world.”
The basic concept behind WHS was to reflect that courses are not of equal difficulty. Therefore always giving a player the same number of shots as a handicap regardless of the strength of the particular challenges posed by differing courses was not logical.
