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Golf Handicap Allowances: The Full Chart

The WHS allowance for every format in one chart: 95% stroke play, 90% four-ball match, 85% four-ball stroke, greensomes 60/40, scramble 25/20/15/10.

MacGregor Thompson · August 27, 2026 · Updated September 12, 2026

Your course handicap is not always the number of shots you get. In most formats it gets multiplied by something first — 95%, 90%, 85%, 60/40 — and that multiplier is called the handicap allowance.

It exists for one reason: some formats make a high handicap worth more than it should be. In a better-ball, a 22-handicap only has to produce one good hole to wipe out a scratch player’s whole nine, because his partner covers everything else. The allowance shaves the edge back down. Get it wrong and your member-guest is decided by whoever brought the highest handicap.

Here is the whole table, then how to actually apply it.

The allowance chart

These are the recommended allowances in the World Handicap System (Appendix C). Your committee can override any of them in the terms of competition — that’s allowed, and it’s how the odd format gets handled — but if nobody has said otherwise, these are the numbers.

Individual formats

Two partners, both playing their own ball

The 90/85 split is the one everybody gets wrong. Same two guys, same better ball — 90% in a match, 85% on a stroke-play card. Match play is already self-limiting (you can only lose a hole once), so it can afford the extra 5%.

Four partners, all playing their own ball

One ball per side — the combined-handicap formats

Here the side doesn’t get individual allowances. You take a weighted share of each partner’s course handicap and add them up into one number for the team, lowest handicap first.

Note how little a scramble side gets: four players off 6, 12, 18 and 24 combine to (6 × .25) + (12 × .20) + (18 × .15) + (24 × .10) = 8.9, rounded to 9. A scramble team of four is not getting 60 shots, and every scramble where somebody handed out full handicaps was decided before the first tee.

How to actually apply it

Step 1 — course handicap first, allowance second. The allowance multiplies your course handicap, not your index. Course handicap is index × (slope ÷ 113) + (course rating − par), so it changes with the tees you chose. (The whole handicap system in plain English.)

Step 2 — round after the multiplication, not before. A 14.6 course handicap at 85% is 12.41, which is 12. Rounding to 15 first and then taking 85% gives 12.75 → 13. One shot is a lot of member-guests.

Step 3 — in singles match play, play the difference. An 18 playing a 10 gets 8 shots and the 10 gets none. The shots fall on the holes ranked 1 through 8 on the card’s stroke-index row — that’s what “I get a shot here” means. In a four-ball match, take 90% of each player’s course handicap first, then play off the lowest of the four.

Step 4 — nine holes is half the shots, and the half matters. A nine-hole round uses half your course handicap, which lands you on a half stroke about half the time. In hole-by-hole games (matches, skins, Stableford points) that half stroke has to survive — it’s what breaks a tied hole. In a total-score competition it gets rounded. That’s the format’s rule, not a preference. (Nine-hole handicaps, answered.)

Step 5 — if the format isn’t on the chart, say so in writing. WHS publishes shares for a one-ball side of two, three or four. Play a six-man scramble and there is no published answer, so the split is your committee’s — which is fine, as long as it’s in the terms of competition before anybody tees off rather than argued about at the prize table.

The formats the chart doesn’t cover

Shamble — everyone hits a drive, you play the best one, then everyone plays their own ball in. That’s not a one-ball format, so combined shares don’t apply; it’s a better-ball with a free tee shot. Most committees run it at the four-ball allowance (85–90%) and some cut it further because the shared drive already flatters the field. Pick one and post it.

Mixed tees. Players from different tees are already handled by the rating-minus-par term in the course handicap formula, so you don’t need a second adjustment on top. If you find yourself inventing one, you’ve applied the formula wrong.

Your Saturday game. None of this is required. Four buddies playing a $10 Nassau can play straight course handicaps and nobody will ever audit it. Allowances start mattering the moment the field gets wide or the prize gets real.

Where the app fits

Swilkin does the arithmetic nobody wants to do on a cart steering wheel: course handicap per tee, the shots landing on the right holes off the card’s stroke index, and the half stroke kept or rounded according to the game being played. The combined-handicap formats — foursomes, greensomes and the scramble ladders — use the published shares above, lowest handicap weighted heaviest. And if you build a one-ball side bigger than the Rules publish a row for, it tells you on the screen that the split is your committee’s call, instead of quietly inventing a number and calling it the format’s.

⚖️ One thing to know before you assume the rest of the chart is automatic: a side bet plays off full handicap. The percentage rows above — 95% singles, 90% four-ball match, 85% four-ball stroke — are the committee’s decision in a competition, and that is where they belong: on a tournament board, set by whoever is running it. When four of you talk a four-ball match on the first tee, Swilkin gives everybody their full course handicap unless somebody changes a number by hand. So if your group plays the 90%, say it out loud and type the numbers. The app will not quietly apply it for you — and it will not quietly not apply it either, because it shows you what everybody is getting before a ball is struck.

⚠️ To be clear about what it isn’t: Swilkin does the WHS course-handicap math on the index you give it, and the published shares for the combined-handicap formats. It does not post scores to GHIN and it is not a handicap authority.

See how handicaps work in the app, or everything else it does.

Running the event, not just playing in it? How to run a club golf tournament and member-guest formats pick up where this leaves off.