What's "handicap" mean in bowling?
By whybird
@whybird (111)
United States
January 27, 2007 9:25am CST
The bowling alley I started going to switched over to a cooler system. It tells you the speed of your ball, scratch, and handicap. Speed, I can figure out, duh, would have to be really really blond to miss that one. But what's scratch, and handicap? How do they figure that?
Since my friend and I get our own lane and don't do that switch off deal I see a lot of leaguers do, then all 10 frames contain our score. And so far the handicap and scratch are the same as our score.
At what point would it change?
1 response
@mamina30 (135)
• United States
31 Jan 07
Handicap is simply a way to make bowling in a league fair for everyone. One who is not that good at bowling can bowl someone who is a seasoned bowler and with handicap be 'equal'.
There are three ways I know to score handicap and they are all done in the same way.
a percentage (either 80 or 90 percent) of 180, 200, or 220.
The lower the percentage and the higher the score, the better the handicap system is for a high average bowler.
The higher the percentage and the lower the score the better it is for a low average bowler.
Let us say you have an average of 165 (an average average)
90% of 200 is 32 (200-165)*90% (31.5 bumped up to 32)
80% of 220 is 47
As you can see... handicaps can vary quite a bit depending on how you score them.
The most used is 80% of 200. You would have a 28 handicap.
