Handicaps – qualifying competitions/games

[balaclava]

I joined this forum after returning to this country and encountering, for the first time, the UK handicap system which defies logic. Before ranting about it here on this forum I had written to the R & A and communicated by email with an individual who was a stakeholder in this system and defended it with words like “statistics” and “nobody else has complained”. Since then I have watched as my club have implemented this or redefined that or modified something else to try and make the system work. The latest thing they have decreed, so that everyone cane get their 3 annual cards in, is said that anyone can get his mate to mark three cards in any (social) game of golf so long as they play off the white tees.

I’m not sure if that is ‘legal’ but whether it is or is not, surely that is the final indictment that the system doesn’t work?

 

[Whereditgo]

We had a guy at our club recently who submitted 6 cards, all signed by non members and every one of them scored a gross of 74!

Apparently the cards being so low etc have to be submitted to "The County" whatever that means

When submitting my cards earlier this year I asked in the pro shop and they where more than helpful in arranging games with members and even the club Captain and handicap secretary to ensure I could get my cards in correctly and quickly. Although I was permitted to submit cards off the yellows.

 

[Mike_j_golf]

Hi,
If you cant play in 3 comps on your home course to keep your handicap up to date (1)Why are u a member of a club and (2)why do u need a handicap, the handicap system works OK its not perfect but is probably as good as it can be there must be something wrong in your club if people aren't playing in the comps.
Mike

 

[Twire]

I joined this forum after returning to this country and encountering, for the first time, the UK handicap system which defies logic. Before ranting about it here on this forum I had written to the R & A and communicated by email with an individual who was a stakeholder in this system and defended it with words like “statistics” and “nobody else has complained”. Since then I have watched as my club have implemented this or redefined that or modified something else to try and make the system work. The latest thing they have decreed, so that everyone cane get their 3 annual cards in, is said that anyone can get his mate to mark three cards in any (social) game of golf so long as they play off the white tees.

I’m not sure if that is ‘legal’ but whether it is or is not, surely that is the final indictment that the system doesn’t work?

So because YOUR club changes the rules, that's the final indictment that the system doesn't work?

Hmmmm, seems to work OK at my club, but we have qualifiers all year round, which is easy to do as long as it's off a measured course. No need to go off whites all the time.

I don't think any system would be perfect, and I'm sure CONGU would agree with that, but it's probably the best we'll get.

 

[balaclava]

The fundamental difference between the UK system and other countries is that in other countries every 18 holes played goes in for handicap. The UK system is, like communism, a perfect concept that in practice, doesn’t work. Because it requires only takes games from ‘qualifying’ competitions and because the definition of qualifying is so restrictive many golfers just refuse to play in those games yet still play off a handicap from previous years which of course never changes. The system requires the committee to strip of their handicap unless they conform. Of course they won’t do that for all kinds of reasons so they twist and turn ever inventing ways to make the system work for these people. Many of the rest of us who do play in the qualifying comps do so, not because they enjoy the torture that is stroke play but because that’s the Saturday game take it or leave it. Then there’s the winter when everything goes on hold. The problem with you who defend this system is that, you have known nothing else and can’t get your head around the possibility that the UK (the home of golf) has a system that doesn’t work for the majority of amateur golfers. Unless you’re a single figure golfer playing in every qualifying comp, your UK HC is likely not to be a true representation of your game. The answer is simple, scrap the qualifying comp and (like the rest of the world) put every 18 hole card in the system and your HC will be a true reflection of your game and will go up and down month on month reflecting the state of your game as it actually is.

 

[Ethan]

I think you are confusing matters. Golf handicaps are basically a way of summarising date (golf scores). You can set a system which favours the average score or one that favours a potential score, one that reacts quickly to short term changes or one that is largely stable over time and changes relatively slowly. The system is basically just maths really, not a political ideology.

Now there are a couple of other issues. One is the way in which local handicap committees allocate initial handicaps, and that is often rather odd. The issue you are vexed about is the requirement for a minimum number of cards to keep a handicap active, and the use of supplementary cards to make up the number. I see no issue with this.

The USGA system allows all cards to be recorded, and the average of the best 10 of 20 (x 0.96) is the handicap. This means that all causal rounds can count, but this is fraught with problems. I have played in the US with people who submitted cards based on rounds where they took illegal freed drops, a mulligan and preferred lies in July. I couldn't resist commenting, and the answer was that everyone does it. So that's OK then. The US system also allows the reverse, carpetbagging, because you can put in a lot of scores quick and have a virtually unrestricted change in handicap.

The problem is your comment is that the handicap is not a true representation of your game. What does true representation mean? Is it best round, typical round or once in a blue moon round? Is it in competition or having a few beers with mates on a causal round?

Each system gives the handicaps it is designed to give, as determined by the mathematical rules of the system. I would argue that the USGA system gives unrealistically low handicaps, also partly due to ludicrously high course ratings. So that is not a true representation, whatever that is, either.

 

[Twire]

The fundamental difference between the UK system and other countries is that in other countries every 18 holes played goes in for handicap. The UK system is, like communism, a perfect concept that in practice, doesn’t work. Because it requires only takes games from ‘qualifying’ competitions and because the definition of qualifying is so restrictive many golfers just refuse to play in those games yet still play off a handicap from previous years which of course never changes. The system requires the committee to strip of their handicap unless they conform. Of course they won’t do that for all kinds of reasons so they twist and turn ever inventing ways to make the system work for these people. Many of the rest of us who do play in the qualifying comps do so, not because they enjoy the torture that is stroke play but because that’s the Saturday game take it or leave it. Then there’s the winter when everything goes on hold. The problem with you who defend this system is that, you have known nothing else and can’t get your head around the possibility that the UK (the home of golf) has a system that doesn’t work for the majority of amateur golfers. Unless you’re a single figure golfer playing in every qualifying comp, your UK HC is likely not to be a true representation of your game. The answer is simple, scrap the qualifying comp and (like the rest of the world) put every 18 hole card in the system and your HC will be a true reflection of your game and will go up and down month on month reflecting the state of your game as it actually is.

I'm still not getting it..Because YOUR club doesn't strip handicaps, and invents ways of keeping members happy, doesn't mean the system doesn't work.

Qualifiers at my club...12x Monthly Medals 12x Monthly Stablefords, Sunday stableford once a month and Wednesday Stableford once a month plus gold letter events makes it around 50ish qualifiers a year.......if I can't get 3 cards from that, there's something wrong.

How many social games do you think the cards are marked correctly with out any Gimmies, Mulligans, Illegal drops, leather wedges etc?

As I said, I think the system is fine, it's just the way clubs miss use it.

 

[Mike_j_golf]

In Ireland Stableford comps count as qualifying so in our club we have 30 Wednesday opens 15 medal comps plus 35 other stableford comps so no excuse for not getting 3 cards in. The American system if so easy to manipulate a 6 handicapper could get a 15/20 handicap by having a bad month where he played a lot of golf.
Mike

 

[Fyldewhite]

I've said before on here, there ain't a lot wrong with the system (though no system would be perfect with so many variables) but it would really help things if all clubs followed the rules and implemented it in the same way.

You have quoted a perfect example. If a player can't be bothered, or avoids playing in 3 qualifying comps a year then that's his problem and the club shouldn't be pandering to such members.

 

[PragueGIT]

You should try the system here (in the Czech Republic)

There is a central Czech Golf Federation (CGF : www.cgf.cz) which all golfers here must join.

To join you need to take a test (9 holes with a club pro and a written test of the rules/etiquette) after which you pay around 100 quid (annual fee), receive your "green card" and a starting handicap of 54, yes 54!!!

I've know good expat golfers come here, get their green card and then play in a corporate tournament off their new handicap and shoot 70+ points.

One friend even won a golfing holiday for 2 in Portugal courtesy of a travel agency sponsored event and his "official" handicap of 54, which has since been cut.

You can register your score (and hand in a card) if you pay the club 100kc (3 quid) and get another CGF member to mark you card and sign it. This system seems to work well.

The 54 handicap starting point is a bit OTT, and they still let "foreigners/visitors" play here if they claim they have a handicap certificate in their home country, but in fairness the system generally works - apart from the odd obvious "bandit win" from someone playing off 54!!

 

[balaclava]

Before considering this question it would help if we took into consideration the fact that people generally don’t like to hear that what they are doing isn’t the best way of doing it, people don’t like change and people automatically defend anything they are doing that is criticised – that’s a people thing.

The next people thing (and this may be a cultural UK thing) is that there is always a suspicion that someone is going to cheat and that there should be little or nothing left to trust. That might be fair as a generality but in my experience, golfers go out of their way to be honest for all the right reasons but also because if there is a smallest suspicion that they are not honest nobody will play with them and if they are caught cheating, they’ll have to move house to get a game of golf.

Next, I would hope that you can step back and identify what a handicapping system is trying to do and who it is aimed to please (because it’ll not please everybody). I would suggest that it should be aimed at the majority of amateur golfers and I would suggest that the 14 - 24 HC would cover the vast majority of amateur golfers in the UK. And I would suggest that the rounds of these golfers varies by an average of 10 shots month on month. And, I would suggest that these golfers play more rounds of social or pseudo competition golf than they do stroke play/medal. I consequently suggest that these people would be better served with a HC system that accurately reflected their average game, not just the tortuous stroke play and that the system reflected the state of their game this month as opposed to last month.

The current system seems to be aimed at single figure guys who want to test themselves against the course or who aspire to become pros’ and it presumes that everybody wants to do that or if they don’t want to do that they can FO because ‘real’ golfers aren’t there to enjoy themselves they are there to test themselves.

If it’s such a great system why doesn’t America and the rest of the world use it?

 

[SammmeBee]

Then there’s the winter when everything goes on hold.

You don't play in the winter then either....fairweather jessie!!

 

[Ethan]

There are many examples where America has departed from the rest of the world in the wring direction. This is a rather minor one.

Your argument has changed. Now you want a system that reflects average ability. That applies to neither the US nor UK systems, so any national distinction between the two vanishes.

In the US the handicap is based on best 10 of 20 cards. Lets ignore the 96% divider.

That means that the handicap is likely to be close to the 5th or 6th best score of those 20 (midpoint of the best 10), in stats language, the 75th percentile. In practice it is a shade higher than that, but even at 75th, it means that you would expect to better your handicap only 1/3 of the frequency with which you play worse. And the amount by which you better it on that 1/4 times is likely to be a smaller increment below handicap than the increment by which you play worse 3 times more often. That is because the data is skewed towards the higher scores.

However, what it means is that this limits the amount by which you will beat handicap on your best day and controls for extreme scores. Suppose you are a 10 handicap playing on a course rating 73. Your average score now is probably 88 or 89, a bit higher than 73 plus 10. Your best score in 20 might be 75, your worst 100. Now give you a handicap of 16 (89-73) and your best score is a rather extreme 14 under handicap. on a Saturday comp, one of those 89 shooters will shoot 75. Maybe the only time in the year, but there are quite a few of them around, and it only takes one. By making the handicap reflect potential, you control the number of extreme values on a given day.

Although it has a slightly different way of adjusting scores, the UK system is actually similar in that it is balanced around a possible good score rather than an average. In my view the main reason US handicaps are too low, apart from some laxity with rules and lack of pressure in comps, is inflated course ratings.

 

[Deleted member 1147]

I would suggest that the rounds of these golfers varies by an average of 10 shots month on month.

Isn't this large variance of potential scores the reason whey we have:

Stableford scoring - nett double bogey rule
Buffer zones - based on category
CSS varying
Only going up 0.1
Going down based on category (0.1,0.2,0.3,0.4)

These combined help take out extremes, and "average" out the score somewhat.

 

[balaclava]

Then there’s the winter when everything goes on hold.

You don't play in the winter then either....fairweather jessie!!

I play during the winter, the HC system doesn't!

 

[Deleted member 1147]

Then there’s the winter when everything goes on hold.

You don't play in the winter then either....fairweather jessie!!

I play during the winter, the HC system doesn't!

Tell Mono that, he has several handicaps over winter!

 

[Region3]

I iwsh we did, no more qualifiers until March for me

 

[Golfmmad]

I play Qualifying comps all year, and also play more comps than social rounds which I thoroughly enjoy. In fact prefer the competitive edge to a social round any day.

Does that make me outside the parameters of this argument?

Golfmmad.

 

[SammmeBee]

Then there’s the winter when everything goes on hold.

You don't play in the winter then either....fairweather jessie!!

I play during the winter, the HC system doesn't!

Is that because your club choose not to follow the 'system' then?

The Club are supposed to allow you as a member with a handicap as many opportunities to play in qualifying competitions as possible (in order that you can play as much as possible to establish and maintain a correct handicap) which they are clearly not doing....

The course can be altered up to 100 (or is it more?) yards from it's measured length and all tees are given SSS so a CSS can be calculated. Preferred lies are covered in the Rules of Golf as is allowing for balls plugging if need be.

So why doesn't your club have competitions in the winter....?

 

[USER1999]

We don't have qualifiers during the winter because we go to a winter course, which is shorter.

I used to put in 50 odd cards a year, and played off 11/12 h/cap. I now put in 12 cards a year, and play off a 11/12 h/cap.

I can't see what the problem is. It all averages out.

Your h/cap is based on stableford and not medal too, so there is no fixation on strokeplay, which apparently favours single figure golfers.

Tosh.