I was playing golf today (in a thunderstorm
) and only stumbled on this thread by accident as I generally give grading discussions a wide berth...
I remember starting a thread on this subject under "Not chess", and intended to do some "research" along the lines suggested above by comparing distributions of handicap v grade. I've only half done this...so here are some random thoughts:
Firstly, I would say that the USGA has a different method of handicapping.
As alluded to above, under the UK method, one would expect to play to one's handicap significantly less than half the time. I believe that the old method of calculating a handicap targeted the handicap as being a certain number of standard deviations below one's expected score relative to par (but I can't find further info on this off-hand). I was led to believe (by a golfer of a statistical bent), that the two systems were approximately equivalent for a category 1 player. Variability in actual score increases with handicap.
I once heard it said that José MarÃa Olazábal (more or less at his peak) would have been about +7. Darren Clarke was +4 when he turned pro, Ian Poulter was (-)4.
Cutting to the chase, I would hazard the following table:
2700 +7
2600 +5
2500 +3
2400 +1
2300 1
2200 3
2100 5
2000 7
Analysing my own club's stats:
1% were 3 or less
5% were 5 or less
10% were 6 or less (there is a bunch of players off 6)
25% were 10 or less
Average handicap was about 15.
I haven't decided whether my club's stats are consistent with my guess - but I would say scratch roughly equates to 2350 which would be FM level. Does that seem reasonable?