Handicap manipulation - how to address

If my next 8 rounds are garbage, no matter how crap they are, my HI will not go up from current 4.6

Then, if I shoot 4 consecutive rounds of SD = 4.5 my HI will go up to 4.9

I love my spreadsheet.
 
rulie said:
Those three cards replaced the three oldest cards in your last 20 (if you had 20). The difference between the three newest scores and the three oldest scores and the 14 scores in between those resulted in the change. It's just math, doesn't mean it's nefarious.
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I am aware that its maths, and nothing nefarious. I am saying that the maths is flawed to adjust my handicap so much so quickly. My game had not changed. WHS is just too choppy. It is trying to achieve a precision of form that it cannot be achieved. My rounds should just have been treated as noise, and not adjusted my handicap more than a couple of decimal points.
Moving it so much so quickly, gives an unfair advantage to those who are temporarily on the upper end of the control limits for their skill.
UHS was tighter. It made for better club competition for handicap golfers.
So signigicant fix needs to be implemented urgently, and should be made before another season starts. EG needs a kick up the.
 
AussieKB said:
I love how my handicap is decided by something that happened 20 rounds ago......
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In principle thats OK I think. UHS determined your handicap on an itteration, and your round 40 rounds prior had some influence. Thats not the problem. Its the jumpy reaction of WHS to a system (changes in our golf capability) that is not that jumpy, is insufficiently damped, and so not a correctly tuned response system.
It can be fixed without dumping WHS. Tweaking some of the parameters is easily done and would suffice.
 
Dunesman said:
In principle thats OK I think. UHS determined your handicap on an itteration, and your round 40 rounds prior had some influence. Thats not the problem. Its the jumpy reaction of WHS to a system (changes in our golf capability) that is not that jumpy, is insufficiently damped, and so not a correctly tuned response system.
It can be fixed without dumping WHS. Tweaking some of the parameters is easily done and would suffice.
Click to expand...
I think the "jumpy reaction" to form is just such a sea change from what we were used to that it seems 'wrong'. I didn't like that element of WHS initially, but have just accepted it is how the system works now.

What I do know is that the topic of WHS is probably the least heard when on the course or in the clubhouse. I can't even remember the last time I came across it being discussed other than on here obviously.

The low guys at ours are still winning regularly, especially so in the more important board comps when the course is set up at its toughest and the 2 rounds competitions. We haven't had more than a couple of comps won with what might be considered ridiculously high (Stableford) or low (nett) scores. The HI limit has been set at 26 for board comps and we always had divisions in medals.
 
Dunesman said:
I am aware that its maths, and nothing nefarious. I am saying that the maths is flawed to adjust my handicap so much so quickly. My game had not changed. WHS is just too choppy. It is trying to achieve a precision of form that it cannot be achieved. My rounds should just have been treated as noise, and not adjusted my handicap more than a couple of decimal points.
Click to expand...
Same old, same old. You seem to think your handicap should be determined by a subjective perception of something you call "my game". What exactly is "your game" and how is it measured? On what criterion other than the number of strokes you take to go round a course can your handicap be based? Your gut feeling? The decibel count of the "noise" created by variable scores? The system already mutes out the noise of 12 of your 20 scores.

It just seems absurd for anyone to think that their "game" is unchanged over a period when their scores have changed
 
Colin L said:
Same old, same old. You seem to think your handicap should be determined by a subjective perception of something you call "my game". What exactly is "your game" and how is it measured? On what criterion other than the number of strokes you take to go round a course can your handicap be based? Your gut feeling? The decibel count of the "noise" created by variable scores? The system already mutes out the noise of 12 of your 20 scores.

It just seems absurd for anyone to think that their "game" is unchanged over a period when their scores have changed
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I am not saying what your reply here is countering.

I dont have a preconceived notion of what my game is or what my handicap should be. I dont mind if its 16 or 18 or 21. Thats not the point. The point is that it should be one of those numbers to a much more stable degree than it is under WHS. We are all very inconsistent in our scores, higher hcs the most. We do not have games where frequent changes to hc in a couple of rounds in any way reflects change in orderlying golfing form.

We want, and had, a handicap system that to a maybe imperfect extent also, but to a good degree, meant the 120 of us playing in our weekend comp went out with somewhat equal chances, equalised by our handicaps.
WHS has introduced a needless and disruptive random element to that, which is where is our hc within a wide band of possible numbers - for EXACTLY the same golfing form. Am I 18, 19, 20, or 21 - pick a random number ? My golfing gross score is the same in all cases.

This tight band we had in UHS seems to have been sacrificed in WHS, for a reason (A commin global system ? Stop laughing there at the back. Portability ? I said stop laughing!) for some that has not been justified, or is not deemed sufficient to outweigh the downside.
 
Dunesman said:
I am aware that its maths, and nothing nefarious. I am saying that the maths is flawed to adjust my handicap so much so quickly. My game had not changed. WHS is just too choppy. It is trying to achieve a precision of form that it cannot be achieved. My rounds should just have been treated as noise, and not adjusted my handicap more than a couple of decimal points.
Moving it so much so quickly, gives an unfair advantage to those who are temporarily on the upper end of the control limits for their skill.
UHS was tighter. It made for better club competition for handicap golfers.
So signigicant fix needs to be implemented urgently, and should be made before another season starts. EG needs a kick up the.
Click to expand...
This is my experience as well.
I am able to thoroughly analyse my own scores, but a similar analysis of someone else's scores could be very different.

I was allocated 4.1 at start of WHS and I am currently 4.6
Next 8 scores to drop off have none in my best 8 and I am fairly confident that I will come down a few decimal places.
I have been as low as 2.3 and as high as 5.5 through these years.

But I really could have stayed at 4.1 throughout, or very close to it.

Fluctuations have not followed "form" as there is no form to follow.
Good, bad and indifferent scoring follow no trends as far as I can tell, but are spread quite randomly over more than a hundred scores.
Last year my best score of the year was SD = 1.0 when my HI was at it's highest point for that year.
2023 my lowest SD was 0.2 and yet WHS allowed me to have a PH of 7 when I shot my best score of 2024. Came 4th with 41 points.
But I felt that a PH of 7 was, somehow, not right for me. And that is how I feel about a lot of chaps I have known for a long time. Occasionally they have HI too high.

You're only as good as your last 20 scores, but then again only 8 of them.
No.
I feel I am better than that.
Not a lot - but better.
And not because I have improved in any way.

This is not a criticism of WHS. It is a descriptive example of it.

WHS is great for the player who takes delight in seeing HI falling due to improvements. Particular so for the player getting from 4 to scratch compared with the previous system.
The downside of this is the possibility of rises in HI that for some are unnecessary and for the unscrupulous those rises could be unjust.
 
Last edited:
Voyager EMH said:
This is my experience as well.
I am able to thoroughly analyse my own scores, but a similar analysis of someone else's scores could be very different.

I was allocated 4.1 at start of WHS and I am currently 4.6
Next 8 scores to drop off have none in my best 8 and I am fairly confident that I will come down a few decimal places.
I have been as low as 2.3 and as high as 5.5 through these years.

But I really could have stayed at 4.1 throughout, or very close to it.

Fluctuations have not followed "form" as there is no form to follow.
Good, bad and indifferent scoring follow no trends as far as I can tell, but are spread quite randomly over more than a hundred scores.
Last year my best score of the year was SD = 1.0 when my HI was at it's highest point for that year.
2023 my lowest SD was 0.2 and yet WHS allowed me to have a PH of 7 when I shot my best score of 2024. Came 4th with 41 points.
But I felt that a PH of 7 was, somehow, not right for me. And that is how I feel about a lot of chaps I have known for a long time. Occasionally they have HI too high.

You're only as good as your last 20 scores, but then again only 8 of them.
No.
I feel I am better than that.
Not a lot - but better. they
And not because I have improved in any way.

This is not a criticism of WHS. It is a descriptive example of it.

WHS is great for the player who takes delight in seeing HI falling due to improvements. Particular so for the player getting from 4 to scratch compared with the previous system.
The downside of this is the possibility of rises in HI that for some are unnecessary and for the unscrupulous those rises could be unjust.
Click to expand...
Smacks of "Vanity Handicap" I'm really good, honest and I don't deserve a handicap as high as 7 😁



Please note the use of the emoji and don't take this too seriously
 
Neilds said:
Smacks of "Vanity Handicap" I'm really good, honest and I don't deserve a handicap as high as 7 😁



Please note the use of the emoji and don't take this too seriously
Click to expand...
How very true.
I deserved a PH of 9 in order to have equity with the winner. Or rather, to have equity with the 3 players who all shot 43 points.

I have Carly Simon singing to me in my head for the rest of the day.
 
Dunesman said:
Declining ability was not mentioned at all to my knowledge. The headline reason was portability. (as we all know, you couldnt go into a clubhouse bar without hearing someone whine about how bust the handicap system was because they couldnt compare their handical to someone in the US. So many golfers quit thr game over the years for that very reason. Sigh...).


Even if it were a reason, for all the talk of WHS just needing vigilant committees to scrutinise GP cards and police cheats, all that would have been needed was an annual review to detect and manually correct those whose form was declining. With the implementation of a handicap review algorithm to flag such players to the committee to consider the appropriate correction. Oh wait....
Click to expand...

As a declining golfer I can say that the old system was very flawed. Having been part of handicap committee for over 12 years now it has the very poor human element of a committee. Nearly every person I have been of the committee was very blinkered when it cam to increasing handicaps and it was nigh on impossible to get an increase above 2 shots even when the scores showed it was necessary. Too much emphasis was placed on scores that could be considered too old with the new system.

With the new system since returning from injury I have gone up 3 shots but with scores that indicate I should go up at least 5 shots However I know that with the new system I will probably go up those five without the need for committee intervention.

With the Continuous Review I reckon with around 25 players on the list each quarter we only put up 2 of them.
 
clubchamp98 said:
Yes it does, you just won’t admit your baby is flawed.

I’m telling you he’s gone from 5 to 12 put enough cards in anyone can do it.
Click to expand...

I have gone from 6 to 15 but it has taken quite a few years to do it up to 8 when the WHS came in so that is 3 years to go up 7 shots
 
AussieKB said:
Played an Open recently where and old friend, now an ex pro, and has gone back to be Amateur was playing off a 10 handicap, to say I was stunned would be an understatement.

Watched him tee off down the middle of the fairway no problem at all, checked his score later and it was mostly bogeys, is waiting for a big tournament I wonder.

But how the hell do you go from scratch to 10 ? oh yes OZ HS or WHS.
Click to expand...
There was a time when to be a pro you only had to get to a low of 8. I believe it is 5 now. Pros are not necessarily scratch players.
 
jim8flog said:
There was a time when to be a pro you only had to get to a low of 8. I believe it is 5 now. Pros are not necessarily scratch players.
Click to expand...
The PGA limits are currently 6.4 for men and 8.4 for women. When our former assistant pro started out about 12 years ago, he was just over the then limit of 3.4 for men but accepted anyway. It was not long after that the limits were increased.
 
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