Sunday, July 7, 1996
By Joe Logan
Philadelphia INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Don't have an official handicap from the United States Golf Association? Want an idea of what it would be?

It's easy enough to figure out.

For golfers without handicaps, the USGA offers a formula called the ``Second-Best Score System'' as a ``simple estimator.''

Here's how to do it:

Write down your four best scores in the past 12 months from a regulation course (with par of 68 or more). Say you shot a 91, 93, 95 and 97. Select the second-best of those scores, the 93.

Now, from that second-best score of 93, subtract 70, if you're a man, giving you roughly a 23 handicap. If you're a woman, subtract 73, giving you about a 20 handicap.

If you play golf so rarely that you can come up with only one score in the previous 12 months, subtract 74, if you're a man, or 77, if you're a woman.

``It's not an official USGA handicap, but it'll give you a pretty good indication of your skill level,'' said the USGA's Dean Knuth.

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