Why your sim handicap should be separate.

The Sim Isn't the Course

Every lie is perfect. There's no wind unless you turn it on, the fairways are as firm as the settings say, and putting depends on whether the group plays auto-putt, a gimme circle or every putt holed out. Some golfers score better indoors than they ever do outside. Others lose shots because the sim doesn't reward the way they play: the bump-and-run, the low punch under the trees, the feel for a downhill putt.

None of that is in your handicap. Your Handicap Index is built from rounds posted on real, rated courses. So it tells you how you play on grass, not in the bay.

What Goes Wrong in a Bet

Play a net skins game or Nassau on the sim off everyone's outdoor handicap and the strokes land on the wrong golfers. The 14 who putts well on a mat gets their strokes and cleans up. The 6 who's a grinder outside but loses two a side indoors gives them anyway. Nobody did anything wrong, and the game was lopsided before the first swing.

A Second Number, Just for the Sim

A sim handicap is a second handicap that only applies to simulator rounds. It doesn't replace your Handicap Index; it sits next to it. A few simple ways to set one:

• Start from your outdoor handicap and adjust it after three or four sim rounds, based on how you actually score in the bay.
• Use the one your sim keeps, if it keeps one. Trackman, for example, keeps its own handicap for rounds played on it.
• Agree on it as a group at the start of the winter, and revisit it a month in. Same as you would for any house handicap.

Whatever you pick, keep the sim settings the same every week. A sim handicap only means something if the putting, gimmes and tees don't change underneath it.

How Duck Hook Golf Handles It

Every golfer in Duck Hook Golf can carry a sim handicap next to their regular one. Add yours on your profile under Sim Handicap, or add one when you add a golfer to your group. Then:

• Turn on Simulator Round when you start a round, and everyone plays off their sim handicap automatically. If you start a round at a course far from where you are, the app asks whether it's a sim round.
• Outdoor rounds keep using your regular handicap, which stays current from GHIN once you've added your GHIN number.
• Duck Hook Golf doesn't post rounds to GHIN, so a winter on the sim never touches your Handicap Index.
• Sim rounds are tracked apart from your outdoor game, so your record shows both.

The strokes fall on the right holes too, because the course on the screen is usually a real one. Duck Hook Golf has more than 27,000 real courses with their hole handicaps, so when the sim loads Pebble or St Andrews, the real scorecard is already in the app. More on that on our simulator page.

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