Course hole stroke index review.

[Tashyboy]

I have lost count how many times I have played our place and the lads have said “ that’s never Stroke index
( insert whatever number). Inevitably it seems to be the same holes.
Has anyone had there course hole SI
Re evaluated, how did it work out.
Was it a big job.
Thoughts please me dears.

 

[irip]

I have lost count how many times I have played our place and the lads have said “ that’s never Stroke index
( insert whatever number). Inevitably it seems to be the same holes.
Has anyone had there course hole SI
Re evaluated, how did it work out.
Was it a big job.
Thoughts please me dears.

We changed a couple of holes and had the course index changed as a result.

I’m not sure of the process as I wasn’t involved but it didn’t take very long.

Personally I don’t care what they are I get a certain amount of shots per round and don’t see it really matters.
What you gain somewhere you lose somewhere else.

In match play a bit different as you don’t want all the shots at the start or end.

 

[nickjdavis]

I have lost count how many times I have played our place and the lads have said “ that’s never Stroke index
( insert whatever number). Inevitably it seems to be the same holes.
Has anyone had there course hole SI
Re evaluated, how did it work out.
Was it a big job.
Thoughts please me dears.

Its not a big job. We had ours redone a couple of years ago after some course changes. E.G. can look at your card and scoring data and give you recommendations which you may or may not follow. Or your committee can just sit round a beer and decide for themselves.

The difficulty is in applying the "guidelines" for how to allocate SI's without folks ending up doing exactly what "your lads" are doing. You will always end up with what appear to be some anomalies. BTW - players perceptions are not always anywhere close to being correct. I have loads of folks moaning about the SI of our 6th hole saying it is way too high and it is a far harder hole than its index (17). But scoring indicates its the 4th easiest hole on the course. There can also be significant differences in both perceptions and actuality of difficulty when playing from different tees. Plus folks have to remember that indexes arent necessarily all about hole difficulty.

We still have a couple of rogue holes which were obviously going to be way out when the indexes were allocated but <turn on Crazyface mode> no one listened to me when I was asked for my advice as to how best to allocate the SI's <CF mode off>. Hopefully we can get these addressed in the next year or so as there are changes going on (new pond in front of the 18th, new ditch across the 17th right where your second shot might land or roll to) that will materially affect how holes play, along with some previous changes (pond in front of the 8th) where the SI's were guessed at and have been found to be a little bit out of kilter. But, as I previously said the empirical difficulty of a hole is really only one factor when allocating an index, as @irip points out, the indexes need to be distributed evenly for matchplay (unless you decide to go down the route of having separate matchplay and strokeplay cards).

 

[Neilds]

We had it done a few years back, not sure what it involved but never heard any moaning about it.

PS - SI doesn’t always relate to hole difficulty, lots of other considerations.

 

[anotherdouble]

https://share.google/ONHckT1hxduZP414S

 

[anotherdouble]

https://share.google/ONHckT1hxduZP414S

Stroke index ‘rules’ for stroke index calculations

 

[Orikoru]

They swapped some of ours last year or the year before. It sort of had to be done since we replaced an easy par 4 (stroke 17) with a tough par 3. I think they just looked at everyone's scores over a period of months to assess how well people were scoring on each hole.

In the end they just swapped 15 & 17 around (which made no difference to me), but also swapped Si8 & 10 around. That makes sense because the latter is a short-ish par 4 and the former is a long par 3 so definitely a harder hole.

 

[Springveldt]

I have lost count how many times I have played our place and the lads have said “ that’s never Stroke index
( insert whatever number). Inevitably it seems to be the same holes.
Has anyone had there course hole SI
Re evaluated, how did it work out.
Was it a big job.
Thoughts please me dears.

They have done it at my current place in the 2 years I've been away. We have back to back par 5's, the 6th runs west to east and the 7th comes back east to west. The 6th is often downwind, has a much easier tee shot and I can reach in 2 a lot of the time. It was SI 10 while the 7th was SI 16 while having a much tougher tee shot and rarely reachable in 2 for me. An example would be the Texas scramble last week. On 6 I hit driver (we took my drive) and 6 iron to be pin high. On 7 we took a playing partners drive who was 15 yards past me and even with 3 wood we all came up short, I was about 20 yards short while my playing partner was maybe 5 yards short.

Now, the 6th is SI 18 and the 7th has changed as well (not sure to what though). I think a few others were changed but since I'm only getting 2 shots currently I haven't really taken notice. I believe they used average score in competitions to re-arrange the indexes.

 

[jim8flog]

It is an easy job if you just want them rated for difficulty, just tick the appropriate box on the computer.

Here we go again where I play - new operations manger insisting on rating them for match play

I stopped worrying about it too much for me now I have reached an eighteen handicap.

 

[KenL]

Our course order has just changed as with the new clubhouse development our new first hole is the old second. They used guidance from Scottish Golf with regards to spreading them out. They’ve done a good job and struck a good balance.

 

[chellie]

It is an easy job if you just want them rated for difficulty, just tick the appropriate box on the computer.

Here we go again where I play - new operations manger insisting on rating them for match play

I stopped worrying about it too much for me now I have reached an eighteen handicap.

Why do they do that? Do they also have two SI's?

 

[Arthur Wedge]

We changed ours a couple years back

We got the stats from the last 5 years and made a few adjustments based on average scores made etc

It’s something we will look to do every 5 years or so

 

[jim8flog]

Why do they do that? Do they also have two SI's?

When this silly system first came out we had two cards but players kept using the wrong card. We then dropped the card with SIs for match play as by far and away the vast majority of golf played here is Stableford.

I have tried many times to get 2 SIs on the card without success.

 

[D-S]

When this silly system first came out we had two cards but players kept using the wrong card. We then dropped the card with SIs for match play as by far and away the vast majority of golf played here is Stableford.

I have tried many times to get 2 SIs on the card without success.

When I've played in Wales they tended to have a matchplay and a stroke play SI on cards or separate cards for matchplay and stroke play. Not sure if this is still the case. I seem to recall that 17th at Porthcawl was something like 17 in stroke play and 3 in matchplay although I may be mistaking the hole,
Certainly when we played Pennard as a group is was a nightmare as some groups played off the Matchplay SIs and some off the Strokeplay. This was 6 or 7 years ago so things may well have changed.

 

[KenL]

We changed ours a couple years back

We got the stats from the last 5 years and made a few adjustments based on average scores made etc

It’s something we will look to do every 5 years or so

Can be costly if you need to change course signage.

When this silly system first came out we had two cards but players kept using the wrong card. We then dropped the card with SIs for match play as by far and away the vast majority of golf played here is Stableford.

I have tried many times to get 2 SIs on the card without success.

interesting. Almost no stableford at my club. Just a couple of midweek medals a year. Everything (apart from 2 par/bogey comps) is medal (stroke) play.
I would prefer more stableford comps.

 

[Arthur Wedge]

Can be costly if you need to change course signage.

interesting. Almost no stableford at my club. Just a couple of midweek medals a year. Everything (apart from 2 par/bogey comps) is medal (stroke) play.
I would prefer more

Wasn’t too much for us

 

[KenL]

Wasn’t too much for us

How much was it?
We have brass plates, 3 per hole, doubt that is cheap.

 

[Tashyboy]

Its not a big job. We had ours redone a couple of years ago after some course changes. E.G. can look at your card and scoring data and give you recommendations which you may or may not follow. Or your committee can just sit round a beer and decide for themselves.

The difficulty is in applying the "guidelines" for how to allocate SI's without folks ending up doing exactly what "your lads" are doing. You will always end up with what appear to be some anomalies. BTW - players perceptions are not always anywhere close to being correct. I have loads of folks moaning about the SI of our 6th hole saying it is way too high and it is a far harder hole than its index (17). But scoring indicates its the 4th easiest hole on the course. There can also be significant differences in both perceptions and actuality of difficulty when playing from different tees. Plus folks have to remember that indexes arent necessarily all about hole difficulty.

We still have a couple of rogue holes which were obviously going to be way out when the indexes were allocated but <turn on Crazyface mode> no one listened to me when I was asked for my advice as to how best to allocate the SI's <CF mode off>. Hopefully we can get these addressed in the next year or so as there are changes going on (new pond in front of the 18th, new ditch across the 17th right where your second shot might land or roll to) that will materially affect how holes play, along with some previous changes (pond in front of the 8th) where the SI's were guessed at and have been found to be a little bit out of kilter. But, as I previously said the empirical difficulty of a hole is really only one factor when allocating an index, as @irip points out, the indexes need to be distributed evenly for matchplay (unless you decide to go down the route of having separate matchplay and strokeplay cards).

Excellent post

 

[Arthur Wedge]

How much was it?
We have brass plates, 3 per hole, doubt that is cheap.

Think about £2k for everything