At first glance, two players may appear to be only 8–10 Handicap Index points apart, but under the USGA/WHS handicap system, each player's Handicap Index is converted to a Course Handicap for the specific tees being played. At StoneWater, the White tees are rated 69.0 / 130, so the calculation is: Handicap Index × (130 ÷ 113) + (69 − 71).

• As a general example, a player around a 12 Handicap Index converts to roughly a 12 Course Handicap, while a player around a 22 Handicap Index converts to roughly a 23 Course Handicap. What initially looks like about a 10-point Index difference can therefore become about an 11-stroke Course Handicap difference.
• Because StoneWater's slope of 130 is higher than the USGA baseline of 113, the higher-handicap player receives a larger upward adjustment in the conversion than the lower-handicap player.
• Those strokes are then assigned according to StoneWater's 18-hole stroke-index rankings, not simply divided evenly between the front and back nine.
• On the back nine, the first 10 or 11 strokes both fall on the same five holes: 12, 13, 15, 16 and 18. The 11th stroke falls on a front-nine hole, so whether the full-round difference is 10 strokes or 11 strokes, the higher-handicap player still gets 5 dots on the back nine.