Handicap manipulation - how to address

[Colin L]

I don’t necessarily think it is WHS has made cheating easier, it is the ease of use and lack of limits and constraints on GP cards that has done that.
These are things that are controlled by the local governing body. In Spain there are limits to GP cards I believes and we have heard about the Mauritius example.
The impetus for this seems to have come from the US style of handicapping/score tracking where entering your score used to be just typing two (or three) digits into a touchscreen or App and was enabled and encouraged to be done after almost all rounds in the majority of formats.

Agreed. CONGU from the start exercised control over the returning of GP sores by retaining the UHS supplementary score requirements - considerable constraints compared with what I understand to be the situation in the USA.

I'm taken back to what I've already said in this thread. You put a score into the WHS system and it is processed. There is no way the player can get into that system and manipulate the outcome; the only way of manipulating the outcome of the process is to put false scores into it. It is not that the WHS has made it any easier to falsify scores than before but as can often be the case when we seek to make improvements , a strength can be exploited by the unscrupulous (aka cheats). If you want to get your HI up dishonestly you can do so far more quickly than before because the WHS keeps up much better with the decline of the honest golfer than the UHS did. Buthe failure of the UHS to reflect decline adequately seriously affected a large proportion of golfers and remedying that is one of the significant improvements the WHS has brought. That it also gives golfing crooks an opportunity to inflate their handicaps is not a fault in a system which brings benefits.

No-one has shown that the WHS system can be manipulated other than by putting false scores into it and the only way you can control the input of false scores is by surrounding the system with safeguards (which are deterrents but which are unlikely ever to be foolproof) and by going for the crooks.

 

[Voyager EMH]

We have one player at our club who has, and I must be careful here, "raised a few eyebrows" with a succession of low GP scores end of summer and autumn.

Some of the subtle manipulation that I (anecdote alert) am aware of is players with little interest in winning club comps. Their main hobby is social golf.
Having a handicap that THEY don't play to more than 75% of the time is ridiculous to them.
A handicap that they can play to most of the time is what they want to have and, to me, is what they seem to have.
Paying loads of money for a 2-dayer at St Mellion or a week in Turkey only to be scoring 31 or 32 points would give them little pleasure - 36 or 37 points does make it pleasurable.
But detecting deliberate poor scores in comps is difficult when those scores are fairly consistent and not disadvantaging anyone in those comps.
Not so much a symptom of WHS or a criticism of it, but it does very much suit this approach to golf.
Very useful to have such a player in one's betterball or AmAm team.

 

[rulie]

This thread is called handicap manipulation. So, we are talking about golfers who lack integrity. Unless you believe 100% of golfers do have integrity and handicap manipulation doesn't happen?

No, I don't believe that - there are bandits/sandbaggers who lack integrity, and they should be called out by players and committees as appropriate. The Rules can't do it, they're only words on paper. People can do it.

 

[Dunesman]

No, I don't believe that - there are bandits/sandbaggers who lack integrity, and they should be called out by players and committees as appropriate. The Rules can't do it, they're only words on paper. People can do it.

I would disagree on two aspects here.

It may be logically true that players and committees can and should call out cheats, but unfortunately thats just not practical. But for the most obvious cases of totally fictional or wrong cards though, nobody wants to, or is going to, accuse or finger the casual sandbagger of a shot or two here or there in some rounds only, who know exactly what they are doing and only does so up to a point where nobody will call them out. Depending on rules and scope that will not be used in practice is bad rules, bad system. It is just delusional to say this is what should happen, therefore it must and will.

The rules cannot prevent the outright cheat. True. But how easy the rules make cheating or how much they make it difficult to do so, is not an either or. The old system was more resilient to cheats than WHS. Not impervious either, but better. So cheating is a bigger problem than it was. Better rules limited the scope - and so the rules do have an effect.

 

[3offTheTee]

It MAY be classed as handicap manipulation, highly unlikely imo.

We had a 2 person scramble yesterday 15/35% Par 71, preferred lies in General area, 2 temps. Yellow tees slope 129. Winning score 59. Great knock.

We came last with 72, no manipulation there. Well not quite as 2 did not submit cards!

What is the ‘expected score’ given the circumstances described?

Any thoughts would be welcomed

 

[Colin L]

....... Depending on rules and scope that will not be used in practice is bad rules, bad system.....

No it isn't. It is quite simply bad management.

 

[rulefan]

No it isn't. It is quite simply bad management.

Agree. All the checks are available for use by properly run handicap committees or club management.

 

[rulie]

No it isn't. It is quite simply bad management.

 

[wjemather]

It MAY be classed as handicap manipulation, highly unlikely imo.

We had a 2 person scramble yesterday 15/35% Par 71, preferred lies in General area, 2 temps. Yellow tees slope 129. Winning score 59. Great knock.

We came last with 72, no manipulation there. Well not quite as 2 did not submit cards!

What is the ‘expected score’ given the circumstances described?

Any thoughts would be welcomed

Scrambles aren't an authorised format, so there is no handicapping issue with scores not being returned.

 

[3offTheTee]

Scrambles aren't an authorised format, so there is no handicapping issue with scores not being returned.

I am aware that scrambles are not an authorised format.


Despite coming last from the scores submitted we were not last as 2 teams did not submit cards. My point was that 59 was an excellent score.

 

[wjemather]

I am aware that scrambles are not an authorised format.


Despite coming last from the scores submitted we were not last as 2 teams did not submit cards. My point was that 59 was an excellent score.

Ah ok.
All sorts of scores can happen in a scramble, but 59 seems like a perfectly reasonable winning score - a couple of strokes better than that wouldn't be unusual.

 

[Swango1980]

No, I don't believe that - there are bandits/sandbaggers who lack integrity, and they should be called out by players and committees as appropriate. The Rules can't do it, they're only words on paper. People can do it.

Completely agree with this. Rules are only words, but they can't automatically catch and deal with all handicap cheats. People need to do that. Which is the root of the problem, and why many have found WHS to be much more controversial in this area.

People don't know anything about the handicap rounds of about 95% plus of golfers at their club, as they don't play golf with them. Committee members, golfers themselves, will be in exactly the same position in terms of watching others play golf. Of the people you do regularly watch play golf, unless they directly tell you they are intentionally playing badly, you'll have no idea if a golfer intentionally missed several short putts or half heartedly smacked a ball down a fairway or two, because that golfer is actually aware they are about to lose 2 or 3 good scores and it would be useful to get a higher handicap for a big competition in a week or two. Even if you suspect something, these people are probably your friends, so it is unlikely you are going to report them to the Committee anyway.

It is why many struggle to trust the system, and how many of the thousands and thousands of golfers use it. I know a guy who's handicap went up 3 shots in a few weeks, after he would submit a load of GP scores and missed so many short putts it was laughable. But, as comps are in handicap order, he didn't like some of the guys he was being drawn with, so it was suspected he wanted a higher handicap to play with other people in comps. Once his handicap went up 3 shots, he stopped submitting GP scores. I have known a few others who rush to submit GP scores when they are losing a string of top 8 GP scores, but will not dare submit a GP score when they are just losing a bad score. It is their right to submit or not submit GP scores, so that isn't even cheating. But does feel very much like it could be manipulation.

The last system, we know cheats existed and complaints were also made then. But, at least the best a cheat could hope for was a 0.1 increase, so every now and then it might give them an extra shot in a comp. But, they were never going to get 4 or 5 extra shots in a competition in a few weeks time. Under WHS, we'll still complain about these people, especially as they are clearly rewarded much more for cheating as the system moves handicaps up more quickly. It is also much easier to do, as all the golfer needs to do is type a score in on an App, it never has to go under the nose of a Committee. To be fair, even if it did, the Committee will have no idea how legit the score is anyway. I'm sure most Committees don't even check nearly 100% of GP scores, unless someone actually raises something, which must be very very rare.

I don't know the solution, as the system does what it does. Golfers handicaps will increase rapidly, which is good for those that are declining in ability rapidly. But, it is generally impossible to separate those golfers from those that could easily have played better, but didn't. Perhaps the automatic checking will become more sophisticated, flag golfers to Committees that seem to be submitting strange scoring patterns. Though, probably a lot of variables that need to be considered, and then decided what limits require something to be checked further.

 

[clubchamp98]

Under the old system players declining in ability seems to be the main reason why we needed a change.

Why not just address that problem within the system we had.

We have thrown the baby out with the bath water and just created a cheats charter.
No Committee can sanction anyone whose clever enough to use the system for manipulating their handicap.

 

[Colin L]

In this part of the world where we play a lot of it, matchplay is quite useful in identifying those whose handicaps are rather higher than they should be.

 

[AussieKB]

Out here in OZ you can play 7 days a week in comp's, so very easy to move your handicap up if you so wish,
perfect for OZ HS (WHS for you) manipulators.

 

[Swango1980]

In this part of the world where we play a lot of it, matchplay is quite useful in identifying those whose handicap is rather higher than it should be.

But, as soon as someone loses a match and suggests the opponent's handicap was too high, they are accused of sour grapes (which, of course, may often be true), and that the higher handicapper just had a good day, and the loser didn't

 

[Swango1980]

Out here in OZ you can play 7 days a week in comp's, so very easy to move your handicap up if you so wish,
perfect for OZ HS (WHS for you) manipulators.

To be fair, in the UK we can generally play 7 days a week and submit GP scores if there is no comp on. So, just as easy to move handicap upwards, if that is your intent.

 

[AussieKB]

To be fair, in the UK we can generally play 7 days a week and submit GP scores if there is no comp on. So, just as easy to move handicap upwards, if that is your intent.

But for 365 days a year ????? Don't you suspend handicaps over a period of time in winter ?

 

[nickjdavis]

But for 365 days a year ????? Don't you suspend handicaps over a period of time in winter ?

Not universally. Some clubs are able to play handicap qualifying comps across the entire year. My own club does so. I grant you that we don't hold many...i think there are 7 in total over the Jan/Feb period. We have a set of artificial winter tees which allow play all year round and it is only in extreme conditions that the course becomes unplayable due to the ground conditions.

Also allows folk to continue to put in GP scores if they wish....looks like we've had roughly 110 GP scores submitted so far this year.

 

[rulefan]

But for 365 days a year ????? Don't you suspend handicaps over a period of time in winter ?

It depends on where the course is located, the prevailing weather type, nature of the ground, hillside, links, parkland .....