NetHandicap: the quest for an online handicap tracker (part 3)

This is the third post in a series on online handicap tracking sites and software. For years now I've used Yahoo!'s free online handicap tracker, and am looking to find a service that does more with my data than simply display it.

The second new site I opted to try out is NetHandicap.com, a service that is free to try, and offers two different service levels: USGA handicap cards for $10.50 a quarter, or a recreational handicap for $14.99 per year.

Initially, I signed up for the trial period for a USGA handicap, and then got cracking. Sign-up was easy, required no credit card information up front, and once I figured out where to find courses and how to enter scores, I was off and running.

In fact, the first time I saw one of NetHandicap's expansive scorecards, I unconciously let go of my laptop and began rubbing my nipples and making happy little sounds. My wife thought it was cute, until she saw the data spread I was looking at.

NetHandicap.com's scorecard is inspiring. Who knows what they do with the data?

NetHandicap has a detailed scorecard for every course you play. You enter score, putts, and sandies, and simply click on check boxes for fairways hit, greens in regulation, etc. It takes the data and automatically calculates everything for you. NetHandicap actually automatically calculates your score, your total putts, and all of the other data in real-time, which is nifty and useful (it caught an addition error on a scorecard of mine. yay.).

The NetHandicap "home page" offers lots of crunchy data: what does it do with all of it?
You have to pay the man before he'll read your palm, son.

All of that data is presented in a handy-dandy format on your "home" page at NetHandicap, and you can readily customize which stats you want presented. I chose a slew of stats to see what it would look like, and it got messy: the table just kept extending off to the right of my screen. It also got depressing: I don't need to know that I only score birdies 0.08% of the time.

They way that NetHandicap collects data and initially crunches it gave me great hope for analysis they'd offer. But here is where their site breaks down, in my book, because they serve up a classic Catch 22: you can't see detailed analysis until you post more than 5 rounds, but you can't post more than 5 rounds until you pay your money and join the site. I suppose if I were enamored enough with their scorecard I would just trust in their analysis. But I'm not.

I emailed the team at NetHandicap to ask if there was any way I could add a few more courses to my trial for the purpose of writing a review, and never heard back. It's not that $10.50 is a huge sum of cash, but it is the principle: the goal here isn't just to write the review, the goal is to find good, analytical handicap tracking software...without having to subscribe to every site out there just to see what they do with the data.

Next stop, Golfing Record. And after that, I'll make an extra stop at MobileGolfRecord: a reader recommended it, and other readers have been letting me know that they like it.