Thanks for your reply. You are quite right that tournament play is for fun - I entered a tournament the other day and came in first and won 18 cents. Who cares about the money? But where's the fun in playing a scratch player if you're a 10 handicapper? Why bother to enter a tournament at all if you can't possibly compete? Of course players who practice will become better players. My experience in real life golf is this: the better players generally win anyway because their games are more consistent and that's as it should be. But remember: whether you are scratch or a 24 handicap, you must play the best golf of which you are currently capable to win a tournament.
I am fairly new to WGT so I don't know to what extent sandbagging occurs but so far what I've observed is that those who do so do it in the other direction: i.e. falsifying their scoring averages downward by not completing their bad rounds. Handicapping would shine the light of truth on such dishonesty pretty quickly if their own innate sense of ethics did not.
At any rate, whether you like the idea or not, handicapping is suggested as an option only when creating a tournament and your participation would be entirely a matter of choice.