How Do You Feel About Your Handicap? And I Don't Mean Your Husband :))

My husband and I took a trip to Whistling Straits and included in the package was a half hour lesson from

Whistling Straits

one of their pros.  He asked me my current handicap,
which at the time was a 21, and then asked what goal I had set for myself and my golf game.  I said I'd like to be a single digit.  He looked at me and said, that's a fine goal.  Let me tell you what you're going to have to do to get there.  You'll have to take a couple of lessons a month, practice at least 2-3 days a week as well as play 2-3 times a week.  Is that a reachable goal?  Hell no!  So I said, how about a 15?  As Matthew McConaughey would say, alright, alright, alright.  That's doable.  And I did get there.  Stayed that way for about 5 years until I got this neurological disorder that does funky things to your shoulders.  It's called spasmodic torticollis.  I'll write about that later.  I'm now up to a 20.  I was playing in one of our associations weekly games and talking with my partner about stuff...kids, husbands, what's for dinner etc.  I looked at her and said, it might be nice if I actually focused on my game rather than just getting up and hitting the ball.  There seems to be more women that live by that credo.  Not really caring about the quality of their individual game but more on the social aspect of it.  I'm competitive and when I play competitively, I play better.  Focused. Could the lackadaisical  aspect of my playing be called "sandbagging?"  I do know of women that when playing competitively they play lights out whereas just playing " a round", they score higher.  When a tournament comes around, they have been penalized strokes for these wide discrepancies.

In this month's Golf Digest (April 2014), they published a graph of the average handicaps nationwide regarding both men and women.  The average for women...25.  For men...14.  I shared this with my golfing group and two things were yelled out.  The men give huge putts plus they artificially set their "max" per hole.  One guy is a 12 but won't take anything over a double on a hole even if it's a par 3 and he has a 6 (he takes a 5).  Or it's a par four, he has a 7 but gives himself a 6.  They do this, at least as far as I can tell, while golfing on a casual basis i.e. playing with the wives.  I thought people tried to sand bag to try to increase their handicap not lower it.  The other thing yelled out...women count every stroke.  The majority of the women I play with do. And the other question to ponder is how many people actually post their vacation scores? In another post, The Dreaded Handicap, I wrote about how other countries handle the handicap situation.  They do indeed treat the system differently.

So the question is...are you happy being above that number of 25 and if not, what are YOU going to DO about it?