clubchamp98
Journeyman Pro
That depends on the ruling !Glad somebody remembers that! Sometimes our referee's dress code says black hats; I always say that I would much prefer a white hat - two reasons > good guys and black is too hot.
Handicap manipulation - how to address
- Thread starter Teebs
- Start date
rulie
Head Pro
We're there to help - thus the white hats are better indicator.That depends on the ruling !
It was good guys v bad guys, and then along came Yul Brynner 
clubchamp98
Journeyman Pro
He was better as a robot!
Imurg
The Grinder Of Pars (Semi Crocked)
But he was BaaaaD....
3offTheTee
Tour Rookie
Amazing how many threads go off track so quickly. This being a case in point . What relevance to black and white hats to handicap manipulation.
No offence to whoever posted. I could have highlighted several posts
No offence to whoever posted. I could have highlighted several posts
clubchamp98
Journeyman Pro
It’s a well known fact if you wear a black hat your a manipulator!
rulefan
Tour Winner
I didn't know before but I do now.It’s a well known fact if you wear a black hat your a manipulator!
Voyager EMH
Slipper Wearing Plucker of Pheasants
Brilliant.
But is not merely those with HI < 5 that can be regularly disadvantaged. It is all players who play regularly and are very consistent in their scores.
This might be a 70+ chap who doesn't hit it far but straight and hardly ever duffs it and has a good short game. Plays off 16.
WHS favours the wildly inconsistent player. Such a player was favoured by the old system but, it would appear, even more so now.
It would have taken me a long time to go up by 3 shots - years.
But I could achieve it now in 10 to 15 rounds. Come back down again. And go up again. A few times over in 3 years.
As handicaps vary more greatly now - so does the appearance of winning net scores.
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AussieKB
Well-known member
If you want to win than this sounds like the blueprint......I'm on my way, gone up nearly 2 shots in 3 weeks.
Slab
Occasional Tour Caddy
Yeah that was my point
This thread has been very well represented from the low single figure handicap player perspective, but with very little consideration in the suggested 'fixes' from them towards the consistent 16 handicap guy in your example
clubchamp98
Journeyman Pro
I think that’s because there isn’t an answer to this.
Any tweaking disadvantages someone else.
Make it 4 from 10 takes out the big differences and probably more form based recent cards.
Slab
Occasional Tour Caddy
yeah, definitely no easy fix/tweaks (or we'd have found them by page 3
) and despite options like divs, max h/cap and gross prize etc etc there's always gonna be a comp, club or player here and there that believes WHS won't work as expectednickjdavis
Head Pro
Depends a lot on the Slope of the course....low slopes (say 123 and below) it wont have a significant impact, high slopes (>130) and it may have a beneficial effect.
Below is an analysis of 30 odd players at my course, shows their current index, a list of their best 8 differentials and what their index would be if you took the best 7/6/5 or 4 from their last 20 scores. The third table shows their Playing Handicap at my place (singles strokeplay comp) depending if you are using best 8/7/6 etc to determine the index. Our slope is 120.
As you can see....even using as low as an "average of the best four from the last 20" makes very little difference...only 1 player (AB) loses three shots, simply because he has two exceptionally low rounds that are not in keeping with his typical scoring pattern...so they get given greater prominence when you start using only the best 4 or 5 scores from 20.
Most of the higher handicaps will lose 2 shots, whereas most of the low guys (with one notable exception DS who has an incredibly tight distribution of differentials) will also lose a shot. The largest variance from a players index to his worst differential in his 8, are the players highlighted in purple....but even then the variance is not extreme no one has got a rogue high score in their best 8 that is skewing their index higher than it should be, there are also some higher handicappers who have relatively tight scoring distributions in their best 8 (green).
upsidedown
Tour Winner
rulie
Head Pro
Here's some data that was posted here last month. It shows the average and standard deviation (indication of variability) for some different handicap groups. While the data is limited, the low difference in variability between lower handicap and higher handicap is interesting.
Attachments
jim8flog
Journeyman Pro
Based upon my last 10 that is me up 2.5 shots on my current index, mind you hard cap would have kicked in before that happened.
Might take a bit more working out to work out exactly what effect that change would be using say the last 15 months scores as all indexes would have changed and low index might be very different.
clubchamp98
Journeyman Pro
I was hoping just ten cards might be more up to date for most golfers and they wouldn’t have cards two years old .
rosecott
Money List Winner
You might be interested to know that England Golf will be running a WHS seminar on Monday next week.
First item on the agenda is "Score and Handicap Index® manipulation"
First item on the agenda is "Score and Handicap Index® manipulation"
Swango1980
Well-known member
The fewer scores you use, the more volatile handicaps will become. The biggest complaints about WHS is how volatile it is compared to last system (particularly in terms of going upwards).
If you truly want to make your handicap reflect your most recent form, it could just be based on your last score (only as good as your last round). Clearly, there would be huge drawbacks to this. Using last 2 scores, 3 scores, 4 scores, etc would stabilise that extreme idea, but would still be wildly unstable compared to what we have.
I'd like to think that most enthusiastic golfers, especially those that play in competitions, are able to submit 20 or more scores in a year anyway, or certainly not much beyond that. If they don't, then it is up to competition organizers to set conditions if they feel it isn't a good idea to have players in the competition that have very little recent playing history. If they do, I'm not sure how easy it is to weed these players out? Do organisers need to look through the records of all entered players, and then remove them if they don't meet the requirements? It would be good in the competition set up, where you could set the criteria on the software. If a player doesn't meet that criteria, they are automatically given a message they do not meet the criteria and cannot play, or do not meet the criteria, can still play within the competition but uneligible for a prize (i.e. they still get a game of golf and a counting score on handicap, if it is an acceptable format)
