SoCal Golf INSIDER

continued from previous screen Pines South. In fact, I'm guessing a 4 at Mile Square would have a hard time breaking 90 playing from the 7,628-yard tips at Torrey, a course that Phil Mickel- son has said is the hardest course out- side of the majors that tour pros play every year. Generally speaking, a "scratch" golfer is one who averages shooting par or better during a round. According to the U.S. Golf Association, however, a "scratch" golfer is a player who can play to a course handicap of zero "on any and all rated golf courses." Big difference. But I'm not going to quibble. If you have a 0 index at your club, I'm officially im- pressed. A "plus" handicap means a golfer usu- ally shoots under par during a round and technically would have to add strokes to his or her score to determine a net score. A tour pro doesn't actually have a handicap, but some carry an index for purposes of posting scores during recreational rounds and – I'm taking a wild guess here -- for betting games at their home clubs. Why else would tour pros such as Gore, PGA Tour pro Patrick Cantlay (+5.1 out of Virginia CC in Long Beach), PGA Tour Champions pros Paul Goydos (+4.5 out of Dove Canyon CC and Virginia CC) and John Cook (+3.8 out of Big Canyon CC in Newport Beach), as well as retired LPGA Hall of Famer Amy Alcott (+0.5 out of Bel-Air CC), post their scores through the SCGA? For more perspective, consider that during Tiger Woods' best season ever in 2000, a year he won nine PGA Tour events including three majors, his index using only tour events never dropped below +10, according to Dean Knuth, the USGA's former Senior Director of Handicapping. Think about that; it's ab- solutely otherworldly! Can you imagine having to give 10 shots a round to a scratch golfer? (As an 8.2 handicap, I'd take my chances at my home club if Tiger gave me 18 strokes; he'd have to break the course record to beat me.) You certainly don't have to be an MIT stat geek to figure out that golfers with plus-handicaps are far superior to the vast majority of the estimated 25 million golfers in the U.S. According to the USGA, only 1.6 percent of male golfers (roughly 265,000) -- and only 0.37 per- cent of women golfers (roughly 92,500) – carry an index of zero or better. If you want to feel better about your single-digit handicap, consider these numbers released by the National Golf Foundation: Of the 25 million golfers who play at least six rounds a year, 92 percent do not break 90, and half of those do not break 100. That's a relief, isn't it? Though Gore, Block and Ricky Castillo had the lowest indexes I found at scga.org, it's possible there are other area golfers who currently carry more impressive indexes. That's because Southern California also boasts the No. 1 male amateur and the No. 1 female am- ateur in the World Amateur Golf Rank- ings, as of Dec. 19: USC's Justin Suh and UCLA's Lilia Vu. Suh, a senior, carries a +4.5 index out of the E-Club South Bay, but his last posted round was in June 2017, long before he ascended to the top of the world rankings. Similarly, Vu, a senior and former Fountain Valley High star, carries a +5.2 index out of the SCGA Col- legian Club, but her last posted round was in July 2018. Right behind Suh in the men's world rankings is Cal senior Collin Morikawa, a La Canada High grad THE 19TH HOLE SoCal GOLF INSIDER continued on the next page > New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady carries a 9.2 handicap at Riviera Country Club and The Madison Club.

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