When you renewed your United States GA membership, your return package included a small book titled “Shortcut to the USGA Handicap System.” As we all know, there’s no “shortcut” to learning or understanding how your handicap works, but it’s a good effort by the folks up in New Jersey.

The handicap system has been derided since the USGA let a staff member named Dean Knuth try and make it more equitable back in the 1980s. Before that, you entered scores and then took the best 10 of the last 20, and 80 percent of that, and you had your handicap.

That didn’t take into consideration the kind of course you played, or even the tee boxes. So you had people competing against each other with the same handicaps whether they played Sawgrass or Deerfield Lakes.

Knuth devised the Handicap Index and, in theory, it’s a great thing. But his “solution” is so complicated that the average person can’t figure it out.

Whoever wrote the little book did his or her best to give us some understanding of the system. Each page addresses a different subject, such as Course Rating, Handicap Index or Slope Rating.

It also gives clear examples of determining your Course Handicap, which you need if you play regularly at Deerfield and are invited to a money game at Sawgrass.

Not that the book is a cure-all — the damn system is way too complicated for that, and you’ll continue to be like most of us: enter your score in the computer and accept what it tells you.

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I was out of the country and missed the Hall of Fame ceremony, but I’m told that it was one of the best.

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Golf is mammoth in Asia (that’s where we were) with courses and resorts popping up all over the place.

Those people have money (check how much you’re wearing that’s made over there, and you’ll know where the money comes from) and they’re hot to spend it.

Manual labor is still cheap and course costs can be as little as half what it takes to build in America.

With the rise of Asian golfers, particularly on the LPGA Tour (and remember that Tiger Woods is half-Thai,) it can only get more popular.

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No big rules changes this time and one important reaffirmation: the USGA and the Royal & Ancient agree that yardage devices are OK as long as they only determine yardage — no wind direction or speed, no tilt of the ground, no compass readings.