Twelve players, three rounds, one goal: handicaps nobody can moan about. Every number is either an official England Golf index or computed from a full history of VPAR rounds — and the maths is all here to check.
Objections may be raised on the first tee and will be noted, then ignored.
Playing handicaps per round · longest handicap first
| Player | R1Pines | R2Challenge | R3Pines |
|---|
Before any round counts towards a handicap, every hole is capped — exactly as England Golf does it. A disaster 10 on a par 4 only counts as the maximum a player of that handicap would be allowed, and a pickup counts as that maximum too. This can only ever bring a handicap down.
Shots received come from the player's handicap at the time of that round (worked out from their 20 rounds before it) and the hole's stroke index.
| Player | Rounds with a cap | Holes capped | of which pickups | Shots trimmed | Without Net 2 | With Net 2 | R1 play |
|---|
VPAR-computed players, last 20 rounds. “Shots trimmed” counts strokes taken above the cap; pickups have no score to trim, so they're scored at the cap. “Without Net 2” uses the same rounds and tee ratings with every finished hole counted as played. England Golf indexes already have Net 2 built in, so those five players are unchanged.
Every judgement call in the calculation, in one place — so any argument can start from the same page.
par + 2 + shots received before anything else is worked out.index × slope ÷ 113 + (CR − par), rounded to a whole number.par + 5.(adjusted gross − course rating) × 113 ÷ slope, to 1 decimal place.course handicap × 95%, rounded, for individual Stableford on the yellow tees.Each player's index, how confident we are, and — for the VPAR-computed players — the exact rounds and sums behind it. Open “Show the rounds & maths” to check every differential.
Two kinds of handicap, both real: an official England Golf index where a player has one, otherwise a World Handicap System calculation on their full record of VPAR rounds.
Mark McAteer, Neil & Lukas Sparkes, Chris Fleming and Paul Timms have official England Golf Handicap Indexes, so we use them directly. Their logged rounds don't set their handicap (Mark's come from VPAR and a Hole19 export, and Neil and Lukas play noticeably worse on VPAR), because the England Golf number is the authority. The VPAR maths below does not apply to them.
The other seven have no official index, so we compute one from their full VPAR history (50–100 rounds each). For every 18-hole round, each hole is first capped at Net 2 (below), then differential = (adjusted gross − course rating) × 113 ÷ slope, and we take the average of the best 8 of the last 20 (the standard WHS window). 9-hole rounds are excluded, as are cards with fewer than 14 holes completed. Each player's card shows the last 20 rounds; their scorecards page shows every card, hole by hole.
Every scorecard was pulled from VPAR and each hole capped at par + 2 + shots received. The shots come from the player's course handicap at the time: their index from the 20 rounds before that one, turned into a course handicap for that course's rating and slope, then spread by stroke index — 1 shot per hole for every 18, and one more on the lowest-SI holes for the remainder.
Steve Buckell at Wexham Park, 2026-06-12: his index at the time was 32.1, a course handicap of 30 — 1 shot on every hole, plus 1 more on SI 1–12. Hole 6 is a par 5, SI 7, so he gets 2: cap = 5 + 2 + 2 = 9. He took 10, so 1 shot come off before the differential is worked out.
Pickups (“/” on a VPAR card) score the cap. For a player's first few rounds, before any index exists, the WHS rule is par + 5 per hole. Where a card has no stroke index, shots are spread evenly. Every capped hole is listed under its round in “Show the rounds & maths”.
A course's rating depends on the tee: at Ellesborough the yellows are 70.1 / slope 135 and the whites 71.2 / 138. So each round uses the rating for the tee actually played. VPAR records every player's tee colour and its length on the scorecard, and we match it against the official ratings: the USGA National Course Rating Database for English courses, the Spanish federation (RFEG) for Spain and Mallorca, and the Portuguese federation (FPG) for the Algarve. Most rounds match a rated tee to within a few yards. The three courses with no official rating (Caddington, which has closed, Toot Hill and Costessey Park) use estimates, marked *. Each player's scorecards page shows, for every round, which tee was rated and how it was matched.
Yes — the England Golf players are the control. Running this exact method on their VPAR history — Net 2 included, just as England Golf calculates theirs — lands within ~0.9 of their official index (Paul Timms 10.8 vs 11.7; Chris Fleming 14.5 vs 14.8; Mark McAteer 28.2 vs 27.4). That agreement is why the seven computed indexes can be trusted.
course handicap = index × slope ÷ 113 + (CR − par), then × 95% for singles Stableford. Aroeira Pines plays off CR 71.3 / slope 131; the Challenge CR 71.6 / slope 136 — hence the extra shot or two in Round 2.
Beat 36 points and you're cut for the rounds that follow: 1 shot per 2 points over 36, accumulating. Shoot 40 in Round 1 → 2 off Rounds 2 and 3. The calculator holds a grudge.
Sources: full VPAR round history · Mark McAteer's Hole19 export · course ratings per tee from the USGA NCRDB, the Spanish (RFEG) and Portuguese (FPG) federations, and Luton Hoo's published scorecard · England Golf indexes self-reported · to Sep 2026.