Okay, so today I’m gonna ramble about something I messed around with recently: trying to figure out Tiger Woods’ handicap. Sounds kinda random, right? Well, it started with me watching some old golf tournaments and just being amazed by his skill. I was like, “Man, I wonder what his handicap REALLY is?”
First thing I did, like any sane person, was hit up Google. I typed in “Tiger Woods handicap” and got a bunch of articles talking about his career, his injuries, and some vague mentions of his past handicaps when he was an amateur. Nothing concrete about his current game though. That’s when I knew I had to dig deeper.
I started looking at official golf ranking sites, you know, the ones that track all the professional golfers. But even there, finding a definitive handicap for Tiger was proving to be tricky. It’s not like he’s playing in weekly amateur tournaments where his scores are readily available. Most pros don’t even HAVE an official handicap anymore, since they’re, well, professional.
So, I had to change tactics. I started focusing on his tournament scores. I grabbed data from the last few tournaments he actually completed. I know he’s been injured a bunch, so I wanted to look at rounds where he was (presumably) playing his best. I pulled up his scores round by round.
Then came the fun part – trying to calculate a pseudo-handicap. I know it’s not gonna be 100% accurate, since I don’t know the course ratings and slope ratings for every single round he played. But I figured I could get a rough estimate. I used a basic handicap calculation formula I found online, something about taking the average of the best X number of scores out of the last Y rounds. I played around with the numbers, tweaking it a little, seeing what felt right based on his typical performance.
Look, I’m not gonna pretend I landed on some super precise, earth-shattering number. But based on my back-of-the-napkin calculations, and factoring in the difficulty of the courses he’s playing, I’d estimate that when he’s in good form, Tiger Woods probably plays off something around a +5 to +7 handicap. Meaning he’s consistently shooting 5 to 7 strokes UNDER par. Wild, right?
Now, before all the golf pros come at me, I know this is just a rough estimate. It’s more of a thought experiment than anything. But it was a fun way to spend an afternoon, geeking out about golf and trying to wrap my head around the skill level of a guy like Tiger Woods. Maybe next time I’ll try to figure out Happy Gilmore’s handicap…kidding (mostly)!
