Some of the most entertaining debates in golf are unresolvable matters of opinion.
Who would win a match between Ben Hogan in his prime and Tiger Woods at his peak? Is National Golf Links better than Shinnecock Hills, or the other way around? What would the average amateur golfer shoot on a U.S. Open course?
Actually, that last question has an answer. It comes from the folks who run the event.
Over the years, the USGA has drummed up many ways to put the challenges of the national championship into layperson’s perspective. In 2010, to cite just one example, a televised celebrity-studded outing was arranged at Pebble Beach Golf Links in advance of that year’s U.S. Open. The goal was for the players to try to break 100. In the featured foursome, Mark Wahlberg was the only player who scored in double-digits. He shot 97. Playing in the same group, hockey god Wayne Gretzky triple-bogeyed the 18th to post 100, while Super Bowl-winning quarterback Drew Brees limped in with a 102.
The point was plain. The Tour pros play a game with which the rest of us are unfamiliar. And yet a single round involving a famous actor and a couple of big-name athletes does not qualify as a scientific study. It doesn’t tell us much about how our games would fare. There are better ways to bore down on a number, and the USGA has come up with one.
As another major-championship season kicks into full swing, the governing body is again rolling out a digital tool that it unveiled for the first time in 2024. It’s a quick-click calculator that uses your Handicap Index and course data to generate a “target score” on each of the USGA’s 15 championships. A target score is defined as the score you would shoot if you played to your handicap.
The number-crunchers at the USGA are still gathering data for some of this year’s championship courses. When that information is ready, all the venues will be posted on a single landing page.
For now, though, you can check your “target score” for three of the big events: the 2025 U.S. Women’s Open, which is taking place this week at Erin Hills in Wisconsin; the 2025 U.S. Open, which will be held at Oakmont Country Club in Pittsburgh from June 12-15 ; and the U.S. Senior Open, which will be held at The Broadmoor Golf Club in Colorado from June 26-29.
Just click those respective hyperlinks, enter your Handicap Index and the system will come back to you with a score. To give you an example, if you plug 14.2 (that’s the average handicap of a male golfer in the U.S) into the Oakmont link, you get a target score of 97. Not terrible. But it’s not going to win a U.S. Open.
For all the system’s nifty capabilities, there is one thing it can’t do. It can’t account for tournament pressure — the jittery feeling we all would surely get if we wound up paired with, say, Scottie Scheffler or Rory McIlroy on the first tee at Oakmont on June 12.
Which raises another question: How many strokes would you have to add for that?
