WHS Soft Cap and Hard Cap

Your Handicap Index moves as you submit rounds. When form drops, it can rise. But WHS puts limits on how quickly that happens, using your lowest index from the past 12 months as a reference point.

These limits are called the soft cap and hard cap. For most golfers they work quietly in the background. You only notice when a bad run fails to push your index up as far as the raw scores suggest it should.

If your calculated index would be more than 3 strokes above your 12-month low, the excess increase is halved.

Example: your low index is 10.0. The soft cap threshold is 13.0. If your scores calculate to 15.0, only the rise above 13.0 is halved. You get 3 full strokes plus half of 2, so 14.0 instead of 15.0.

Whatever the soft cap produces, your index cannot exceed 5 strokes above your 12-month low. With a low of 10.0, the absolute ceiling is 15.0, regardless of how bad recent scores have been.

Caps do not stop your index rising if your form has genuinely dropped. They just slow it down. As your 12-month low changes over time, the reference point moves with it.