Scratch = 0

It’s estimated that about 0.5% of golfers play off scratch or better, so at the moment, playing off 3 I must be around the top 2.5% of players.
That’s no mean achievement, and is better than most players can dream of. As delighted as I will be if I get that handicap certificate that tells me I’m a scratch golfer, I am under no illusion that I will somehow turn into some sort of god of the fairways;
Scratch is nothing, both numerically and in terms of achievement.

I make no apologies for stating a very similar argument to Tom Coyne in his book Paper Tiger (first half of the book is an excellent read by the way), especially pages 51-57.
Golf exists in the shape of 2 pyramids. A scratch golfer is at the top of his club pyramid, the player that everyone in the club wants to play with, so that they can try and beat him, or pick up some tips, or say that they once played in a fourball with someone who broke par. Below the scratch golfer in this pyramid there are various other categories, I would put them in this sort of order;
- The Nudger; plays off 3 or 4, always unspectacular but never seems to return a score worse than 5 over par.
- The Good Weekender; single figure player, thinks that if he had more time / money and less wives / kids he could play a lot lower.
- The Enthusiast; A solid player, but has been stuck on the same handicap for years now, has the time and money, but doesn’t have the skill or body to move his game to the next level.
- The Budding Star; could be any handicap, but is under 18 years old and his handicap is reducing at a rate of knots.
- Everyone Else; I class Everyone Else as a category, basically if you’re not good enough to be classed as one of the above categories, then it doesn’t really matter how often / how good you play, you are just another member of the golf club who hopefully enjoys his golf but isn’t going to get anything more than enjoyment out of it.

So that’s the club pyramid, and accounts for 99.5% of golfers, but the top 0.5% have their own pyramid;
- Tiger
- Multiple Major Winners
- Tour Regulars
- Tour Wannabees
- Development Tour Players
- Q School Candidates
- Plus Handicap Amateurs
- Club Pros
- Assistant Pros
- Scratch Amateurs
The gap between a couple of steps in this pyramid is so mind-blowingly enormous, that it’s difficult to comprehend. As Tom Coyne bluntly states, “Scratch is shit”. You have absolutely no idea how good the players from Plus Handicap Amateurs and above in this pyramid actually are. A scratch player is at the very bottom of this very steep, and sometimes greased, pyramid.
As an example, in the 2009 Scottish Amateur Championship (open to those born in Scotland, or with a Scottish parent, or having lived in Scotland for at least 5 years, although 99% of entrants met all three criteria), 129 of the 256 players had a handicap of +1 or better. That’s over half the field were better than scratch. Of the remaining 127 players, 90 of them were off scratch. And that’s only the players who were logistically able to play in the event. I checked the entry list and none of the 3 players I know who play off a plus handicap played in the event. If time / money / work / geography weren’t barriers, the entire field could have been filled by players better than scratch.
And that’s just Scotland, with a population of 5.5 million. Imagine how many players better than scratch there are throughout the entire UK?*
You think scratch is good? It may be good, but it’s certainly not great. To achieve greatness you have to finish the climb to get above the tens of thousands of people above you in your new pyramid.


*Hopefully with the advent of the National Handicap Database it will be a lot easier to find out the answer to that currently rhetorical question. I would love to see a percentage breakdown for each handicap, e.g. If you are off scratch you are in the top 0.5%, if you are off 1 you are in the top 1.1%, if you are off 2 you are in the top 1.8%, and so on.