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Do You Need An Official Handicap Certificate To Play At Walt Disney World® Golf?

Primarily outside of the United States, many golf courses will require that you present an official golf handicap certificate or card to document that your recorded handicap is below a given threshold to be able to play the course. For example, to play the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland, men must document a handicap of 24 or less and women must document a handicap of 36 or less, in order to be able to play. You must present your official handicap document to the Starter at the first tee before you will be allowed to proceed.

The reasoning behind this requirement is to ensure that your demonstrated ability to play the game is sufficient given the difficulty of the course you wish to play and importantly, to help maintain a reasonable pace of play.

There are various golf organizations around the world that will provide such documents for these situations and in the United States, under the auspices of the United States Golf Association (USGA), the Golf Handicap Information Network (GHIN) is the primary provider of official handicap documents. If you plan to play golf outside the United States, be sure to check the courses to see if they have this requirement, as throughout the majority of the rest of the world, the Royal & Ancient (R&A) Golf Club of St. Andrews is typically respected as the governing body of the game.

At Walt Disney World® Golf, operated by Arnold Palmer Golf Management, we do not have this requirement to play our courses.

We do, however, ask that you observe our pace of play target, which is four and a half hours on the 18-hole golf courses. An important part of achieving this is to select the proper set of tees for your golf skills and to observe on course tips, provided by our Pace of Play Ambassador, Jiminy Cricket.

jiminy handicap 3

We look forward to welcoming you to the “Happiest Place on TURF!”