nickjdavis
Head Pro
So...several threads reviewing the WHS and in amongst them there are comments around the issues of players receiving 54 shots....slow play, able bodied person shouldn't need 54 shots, need to learn to hit the ball before they play in a comp, cant compete against them etc etc etc.
Folks who recognise their own words above....don't take umbrage...this isn't aimed at you specifically...its a general observation that could have been made any time since 54 handicaps were introduced...an act that pre-dated the WHS by quite some time as it happens, and generated a similar raft of comments at the time it was announced.
So I thought..."I don't believe I actually know any 54 handicappers...I wonder if we have any at our club?"...and got digging in our handicapping systems database. I thought that 54 cappers themselves would inevitably be quite rare but there would surely be a sizeable number of players with 40+ handicaps if the grapevine/gossip/doom mongerers were to be believed....I set an arbitrary limit of the old ladies max handicap of 36 and decided to have a trawl through looking for our members with 36.1 indexes and above.
Out of 550 members we have a paltry 17 (7M, 11F) who have indexes above 36.1. Their indexes range from 36.1 to 54.0 (yes we have one!) with 11 golfers having indexes between 36.1 and 39.3, 4 golfers with indexes in the 40's and 2 golfers in the 50's. The ages of the 17 players are... 16,35,50,50,56,60,62,65,65,66,70,75,75,76,79,79,82 and 85. One might guess that the youngster is new to the game (they are certainly a new member) and I know for a fact that the 35 year old only took up the game earlier this summer and was allocated their first handicap index (high 30's) less than 6 weeks ago. But, as is plain to see, a significant number are "getting on a bit" and are possibly at ages where health might suffer as well as a general reduction in physical ability....certainly there are no strapping folks in the prime of their lives populating this list....you probably have to go another 18 golfers down to a 32 index player before you think...."come on fella...you should be doing better than that
".
Between these 17 players they have a grand total of 85 cards submitted for handicap purposes for the entire calendar year to date.....of which 36 were competetive rounds...actually, only 7 of them actually played competetive rounds, the other ten have never teed it up in a comp in 2020. Not once have any of these 7 golfers threatened a competition leaderboard.
I don't know if my club is representative of others, if it is an outlier and the world outside this tiny corner of Suffolk is a different place, where 50+ handicappers freely roam (albeit slowly) the course like zombies from a horror movie, lurching from side to side across the fairway (still similar to zombies from said horror movie) as they bat their ball left, right, left, right Army golf fashion.
But from this casual observers point of view I just do not see any of the oft repeated accusations against, well, lets just call them "extreme handicap golfers" rather than put a specific number gains them, standing up. I don't see that play has slowed any, I don't see such players coming remotely close to cleaning up in comps, as far as I can see those players that do hold such handicaps, for the most part probably have good reason to have those handicaps which are perfectly justifiable given their time playing the game or their general health/fitness.
So for me....I find the 50+ brigade "not guilty" on all charges.
Those of you have have access to fact based evidence...how do you see things? What proportion of your club is 36+, 40+, 50+ handicap golfers? Are they winning every thing in site? Are there a raft of youngsters (lets say sub 50 year olds) playing off such handicaps?
Folks who recognise their own words above....don't take umbrage...this isn't aimed at you specifically...its a general observation that could have been made any time since 54 handicaps were introduced...an act that pre-dated the WHS by quite some time as it happens, and generated a similar raft of comments at the time it was announced.
So I thought..."I don't believe I actually know any 54 handicappers...I wonder if we have any at our club?"...and got digging in our handicapping systems database. I thought that 54 cappers themselves would inevitably be quite rare but there would surely be a sizeable number of players with 40+ handicaps if the grapevine/gossip/doom mongerers were to be believed....I set an arbitrary limit of the old ladies max handicap of 36 and decided to have a trawl through looking for our members with 36.1 indexes and above.
Out of 550 members we have a paltry 17 (7M, 11F) who have indexes above 36.1. Their indexes range from 36.1 to 54.0 (yes we have one!) with 11 golfers having indexes between 36.1 and 39.3, 4 golfers with indexes in the 40's and 2 golfers in the 50's. The ages of the 17 players are... 16,35,50,50,56,60,62,65,65,66,70,75,75,76,79,79,82 and 85. One might guess that the youngster is new to the game (they are certainly a new member) and I know for a fact that the 35 year old only took up the game earlier this summer and was allocated their first handicap index (high 30's) less than 6 weeks ago. But, as is plain to see, a significant number are "getting on a bit" and are possibly at ages where health might suffer as well as a general reduction in physical ability....certainly there are no strapping folks in the prime of their lives populating this list....you probably have to go another 18 golfers down to a 32 index player before you think...."come on fella...you should be doing better than that
".Between these 17 players they have a grand total of 85 cards submitted for handicap purposes for the entire calendar year to date.....of which 36 were competetive rounds...actually, only 7 of them actually played competetive rounds, the other ten have never teed it up in a comp in 2020. Not once have any of these 7 golfers threatened a competition leaderboard.
I don't know if my club is representative of others, if it is an outlier and the world outside this tiny corner of Suffolk is a different place, where 50+ handicappers freely roam (albeit slowly) the course like zombies from a horror movie, lurching from side to side across the fairway (still similar to zombies from said horror movie) as they bat their ball left, right, left, right Army golf fashion.
But from this casual observers point of view I just do not see any of the oft repeated accusations against, well, lets just call them "extreme handicap golfers" rather than put a specific number gains them, standing up. I don't see that play has slowed any, I don't see such players coming remotely close to cleaning up in comps, as far as I can see those players that do hold such handicaps, for the most part probably have good reason to have those handicaps which are perfectly justifiable given their time playing the game or their general health/fitness.
So for me....I find the 50+ brigade "not guilty" on all charges.
Those of you have have access to fact based evidence...how do you see things? What proportion of your club is 36+, 40+, 50+ handicap golfers? Are they winning every thing in site? Are there a raft of youngsters (lets say sub 50 year olds
) playing off such handicaps?
