Central Oregon will almost certainly have more snow than decorative bunting when the golf season begins.

Regardless, the Oregon Golf Association is scheduled to power up its handicap system on Thursday, making March 1 the official opening day of the 2012 golf season in Oregon.

Don’t expect much local pageantry, what with Central Oregon’s recent dose of winter. And most years the handicap system is exactly the same compared with the previous year.

But every four years the United States Golf Association tweaks the system. And now that a foot wedge in Oregon will count against your handicap, at least one notable change is worth remembering for those of us who carry a handicap index.

For years, the OGA has set its revision dates during the golf season on every other Wednesday. That sent most of us who are among the 43,000 golfers who receive their USGA indexes as members of OGA clubs scurrying to our email inbox at midweek to see what damage we had done to our index.

Not so in 2012.

Starting this year, in no matter what part of the country a golfer keeps his or her handicap, all USGA Handicap System indexes will be revised on the first and 15th of every month.

That means that regardless of whether a golfer belongs to a club in a seasonal handicapping system like Oregon’s or a year-round association like in Arizona, revision dates will always be the same.

And for the snowbirds among us who sometimes carry handicaps in two states, that should be of some help.

“On a given date you might have had two different handicap indexes because of (a differing) revision schedule,” says Eric Yaillen, the OGA’s director of marketing and communications.

In that scenario, by rule, a club should have taken the most recent index. But that wasn’t always the case, Yaillen says.

“This,” he says of the new system, “eliminates the confusion.”

The change is the reason for the Golf Handicap and Information Network (GHIN) updates that golfers who carry handicaps have been receiving this winter, despite the OGA system being in its offseason.

From now on, even the OGA will revise during December, January and February.

Perhaps more than most regions in the Pacific Northwest, the change in the revision schedule should affect Central Oregon clubs, many of which have members who spend their winters in warmer locales like Southern California or Arizona.

Erik Nielsen, the head golf professional at Bend Golf and Country Club, says that on occasion he is forced to choose between two different indexes for the same golfer.

“You just decide which one you are going to use,” says Nielsen.

Some confusion was eliminated a few years ago when Southern California began using the same computerized system as Oregon uses, Nielsen says.

And while Nielsen doesn’t expect this to be an earth-shattering change, he says that keeping the revision schedules in sync could help a bit more.

“For us, it was always take the lower index or the most active index.” Nielsen says. “I hope (the new dates) will nix some of those.”

Jim Hawkes, the handicap chairman for Eagle Crest Resort in Redmond, was comfortable with Oregon’s old revision schedule. And with GHIN, most of his members post scores in only one state.

But he does see help in another way.

“The one advantage I do see, though, is if we have out-of-staters participating in an event such as a member-guest (tournament),” Hawkes says. “It will be nice to have the handicaps synced up.”

Most of us probably don’t think much about differing revision dates.

But any golfer who competes in a net tournament can take heart in knowing that every golfer’s handicap in the field was updated on the same day, making it more equitable for every golfer by ensuring that all handicaps are measured over the same time period.

After all, equality in competition is why the handicap system exists in the first place.

Handicapping season

The season starts Thursday, March 1; here are the revision and other important dates for 2012:

March 15

April 1

April 15

April 30 (deletion deadline)

May 1

May 15

June 1

June 15

July 1

July 15

Aug. 1e_SClBAug. 15

Sept. 1

Sept. 15

Oct. 1

Oct. 15

Nov. 1

Nov. 15

Nov. 30 (last day to post a score)

Dec. 1 (final regular season revision)

Dec. 15 (offseason revision)