From the publisher’s pen: Handicaps and golf management

Numbers inundate golf industry inboxes and brains in January and February. Achievers study them. Drifters delete them.

Neglecting numbers can be perilous. Macro factors impact micro decisions. Unfortunately, many of us don’t realize this until later in our careers. Parlaying insights generated from numbers into actions places careers in express lanes.

Management resembles a Saturday morning four-ball. It’s a constantly evolving game. Department heads who fastidiously interpret numbers often obtain disproportionate shares of resources relative to their actual value to an organization.

Money doesn’t represent a barrier to grasping the numbers affecting golf. Even in an era of paid subscription and membership overload (That subscription/membership looks cool. Oh, wait! I must allocate part of our tightening budget to that!!!), the golf industry still offers dozens of free reports, spreadsheets and newsletters.

Winter numerical staples range from the National Golf Foundation’s Graffis Report to Golf Course Industry’s Numbers to Know report. Pellucid Corp provides a monthly newsletter to help operators looking to implement data-driven approaches to squeezing more revenue from customers enjoying those weekend four-balls. The GCSAA uses its member research to advocate for the golf maintenance profession.  

The USGA recently unveiled a scorecard of the golfers most serious about keeping scoring: the 2025 Golf Scorecard. The report presents annual data from scores posted under the World Handicap System. Superintendents and their crews turn to the USGA for agronomic data and research, as part of its Green Section initiatives and efforts.

The 2025 Golf Scorecard will not help keep turf alive and thriving by itself. But it does offer insights to help golf maintenance professionals better understand an influential subset of golfers.

The report, though, must be analyzed with macro awareness. Golfers who keep handicaps don’t represent the masses.

Co-governed by the USGA and The R&A, the World Handicap System had 3.68 million active participants in 2025. Participation increased by 8.2 percent compared with 2024 and 46 percent compared with 2020. The growth parallels the surge in golf interest stemming from the pandemic and subsequent player retention triumphs.

Far more golfers still don’t carry handicaps. The global population of on-course golfers hovers around 68 million when combining the most recent participation data released by NGF and The R&A. Raise your moisture meter if you thought the number of golfers actively maintaining handicaps exceeded 5.4 percent?

Handicap-carrying golfers represent the game’s vocal minority. This group often demands that superintendents tote moisture meters everywhere to ensure greens run at gaudy speeds. Fast greens, in their minds, make a golf course tougher. Operators, especially in the private sector, cater to their desires to measure scores and compete.

In 2025, only 82.5 million scores were posted, a significant increase compared with 74.39 million in 2020. Again, the growth masks the small segment of the segment of golfers who actually post scores. More than 550 million rounds were played in the United States last year.

Learning the types of golfers who play a course will help determine proper agronomic and course setup decisions. If a course possesses an abundance of golfers who maintain handicaps and play well enough to keep those handicaps low, super slick surfaces and challenging hole locations become maintenance and set-up priorities.

Based on the 2025 Golf Scorecard, low handicappers abound in southern states. Nothing improves golfer performance faster than year-round warmth. Turf professionals seeking to provide conditions for serious sticks might want to consider working in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas, states where the average male handicap is lower than 13 and the average female handicap is lower than 27.

If keeping a handicap doesn’t matter to a course’s clientele — or a club attracts an abundance of high handicappers — forgiving conditions and set-up decisions become priorities. Tucking pins might seem whimsical before golfers arrive, but triple-digit scores and five-hour rounds damage reputations and curtail revenue. Avoid hindering the experience of hundreds to appease a few dozen players using your course to maintain, lower or raise (sadly, there’s a subset within the subset looking to rig the system) their handicaps.

At its core, golf maintenance remains a form of customer service. Easily accessible numbers revealed in reports like the 2025 Golf Scorecard can help professionals thrive in the most critical part of the job: delighting customers.

Download. Crunch. Study. Repeat.

Just don’t mistake the demanding 14-handicapper for all golfers.

Guy Cipriano is Golf Course Industry’s publisher + editor-in-chief. He doesn’t carry a handicap index — yet.