If you don’t know where to look, getting a copy of your GHIN card can be a near impossible trick to pull off.

Recently, one of our regular co-conspirators here at OneBeardedGolfer.com was preparing for a trip across the pond to the Home of Golf.  Slim needed to provide evidence of his actual golf handicap to the golf clubs he was hoping to play, a common requirement for access to private Scottish courses.

So, he set about investigating how to obtain a copy of his current GHIN Handicap card.

At many private golf clubs, and some public courses, the clubs have a fancy printer that prints only the members GHIN handicap cards from a specific computer.  For some this is a task performed at each revision, for others at the request of the member.

However, if you aren’t a member of a club that has one of the handy-dandy card printers, obtaining an actual printed GHIN card can be a bit of arduous wild goose chase.

The logical place to look is one’s eGolfer dashboard on the GHIN website.  After wasting untold minutes searching his GHIN website profile, Slim reached out to me, flummoxed that there didn’t appear an easy option to simply print his card.

Our crack research team is kept deep underground in the bunker beneath The Greenbrier, and they don’t get out much. It’s really better for everyone.

All of the pertinent information was there on his profile, including his current handicap index and a score history indicating which rounds were included in Slim’s last revision.

But two full-page printouts from which his Scottish hosts would have to decipher whether he was a golfer worthy of gracing their links would be cumbersome and likely to confuse and annoy my ancestral brethren.

So what’s the answer? Where can one simply print a copy of his or her GHIN handicap index card? I summoned the crack OneBeardedGolfer.com research team from deep inside the Greenbrier bunker complex to find us an answer.

First, they sent Slim into the depths of his various email accounts to see if he could locate a copy of the latest revision message from the Kentucky Golf Association.  At the very bottom of each bi-monthly email, in very small hyperlinked text, is a link to print a copy of a golfer’s most recent handicap revision.

Unfortunately, Slim deletes most his emails before reading them, so this path to nirvana proved fruitless.  Even if Slim did still have the most recent email, it’s at best a two or three-step process to accomplish what should be an exceedingly simple task.

Actual thought cloud of a member of the OneBeardedGolfer.com research staff.

The research team learned there is a way, in fact, to print one’s handicap card from the GHIN eGolfer website. However, it’s perhaps the least intuitive thing to try to do on a website that lacks an overall simplicity.

Instead of having a convenient tab or link to click on from one’s eGolfer profile or dashboard, in order to find and print a copy of an actual GHIN handicap revision card, one has to look themselves up on the Handicap Lookup function.

That’s a 5-step process to find something that ought to be apparent.  What’s worse is, one would have to know this process in the first place to be able to navigate the maze to secure a printable copy of the GHIN card.

The USGA has a reputation for being a bit stuffy and a little out-of-touch with the average amateur golfing public at-large.  Nothing screams Ivory Tower elitism like having a convoluted, antiquated website that doesn’t make sought after information readily available.

Of all the problems that the USGA faces, selecting a website developer and technology staff that simplifies this issue is a problem they can actually solve without convening a Conclave to appoint a blue-ribbon commission to sift through 37,021 opinions on the matter.