Kelly Neely can be deluged with emails and phone calls this time of year.

Just recently Neely, the Oregon Golf Association’s senior director of handicapping and course rating, heard among the strangest excuses by a golfer for not posting a score to the handicapping system.

“The golfer proclaimed, ‘I thought once I had 20 scores in I didn’t need to post anymore,’” Neely recalls. “Of course, my first reaction was to burst out laughing.”

Such excuses are a symptom of a golf world that can get pretty confused when it comes to handicapping — the system by which the playing field is made level for competitive amateur golfers.

The golf season officially began last week when the OGA flipped the switch, figuratively speaking, on the handicapping season.

From now until the end of November just about every chip, putt, duff or shank counts toward that seemingly omnipresent handicap index. That should get the excuses flowing.

In Oregon, about 42,000 OGA members have an official United States Golf Association handicap index through the Oregon organization. And all of us can spit out that little number on command after each revision. But who really understands what an index represents?

As the foremost expert on handicapping in the state, Neely certainly does.

And she likes to dispel the misconceptions — and there are plenty — about an index.

See, on its own, the index is relatively meaningless. And golfers commonly misapply it, Neely says.

For instance, a player with a 15.2 index is not automatically awarded 15 strokes at any golf course. That seems obvious to many of us, but so many players wear the index like a badge of honor, Neely says.

In fact, only rarely will a golfer play EXACTLY to his or her index.

“I call that (the index) the raw number,” Neely says. “You have to know it to do something with it, but you almost never play with it.”

As any handicap chair worth his or her salt will tell you, a net round of golf is actually played with a course handicap and not an index.

The rule of thumb is simple: Play a course from a tee with a slope higher than 113, and strokes are added to the index. Anything less than 113, and strokes are subtracted.

In the real world, from the back tees at Juniper Golf Course in Redmond (slope 130) a golfer with a 15.2 handicap index plays with a 17 course handicap.

“We always say you are a 15 where?” Neely says in response to a golfer declaring himself to be a 15 handicap. “It’s not to be a smart aleck, but just to make sure people are converting.”

For many of us, the club’s handicap chair does most of the work for the weekly club game. But venturing out to a course to play with friends forces golfers to do the converting themselves.

Veteran golfers know all about the slope chart, a copy of which can be found at USGA.org, to convert the strokes (which are applied beginning with the No. 1 handicap hole). But like so many things in this world, technology has made this conversion process even easier.

A course handicap calculator on the Golf Handicap and Information Network website, GHIN.com, makes the calculations instantaneously once a golfer inputs an index and course’s slope.

And most convenient, a smartphone application from GHIN includes a handicap calculator.

“You can do it right there on the tee and make sure you have the strokes, giving and receiving, correctly,” Neely says.

The handicap system relies on two basics. First, that a round of golf is played under the Rules of Golf. And second, that every round played under normal circumstances is posted, and posted honestly.

The most crucial component of the system is data, Neely says. Lots and lots of data in the form of scores.

That data not only provides a more accurate index, it also can help a golfer track his or her progress. A target score, for instance, gives a golfer the best score a player can reasonably expect at a particular course. (A target score is easily calculated by adding the course rating with the course handicap.) That can be pretty handy.

But better reasons exist to have an accurate index.

“You might lose strokes if you don’t convert,” Neely says. “That usually gets people’s attention.”

Little makes a golfer take notice more than adding to the score.

To post or not to post

There are only seven reasons not to post a round of golf, according to the Oregon Golf Association:

1. A course is played at less than 1,500 yards

2. Fewer than seven holes are played

3. Any round played in a local association’s offseason, which in Oregon is December through February

4. A round played with nonconforming clubs, balls or tees

5. Played a course with no slope or rating, such as the Old Back Nine at Mountain High in Bend

6. When equipment, such as a swing aid, is used during the execution of a stroke

7. When, under the conditions of competition, fewer than 14 clubs are allowed