Oh come on, you're just trolling as usual. It's clearly highly flawed, to such an extent that before 4 years are up the R&A and USGA are actually sending out surveys to club members. That's not the sign of success
They were and they did.
I assume you mean GI not GUR.
Yes, cracks. I've asked the question within my club as to why we don't run our internal competitions using lowest index in last 12 months. Of course the match and handicap chap is a rabbit in the headlights. No correct answer to that.
I agree with a lot of this but I also find unlimited cards throughout the winter troubling.
On my course, and I think most courses in Ireland, our rounds don't qualify for 5 months of the year, Nov to Mar. There are winter leagues, turkey competitions etc and therefore a considerable amount of golf is played outside qualifying conditions. Some people play much more through these 5 months than they play in the normal season. We play a shorten course with the rough cut back. There is no significant reduction in slope and therefore the high handicappers have a field day, lots of turkeys and their handicaps remain largely untouched. It's a links course so we have no wet fairway problems.
I assume that this is the motivation behind the recent survey. I just hope they pay attention to the results and get on with binning it. Ok, keep the idea of slope as that's just SSS by another name but average of best 8 from last 20 is an abomination. Go back to the old system for handicap index calculation please, please, please!!!!
I'm afraid you got that bit wrong. SSS is CR (and was for many years before in CONGU (except for the EGU who introduced the USGA rating a couple of years before WHS))
There is some truth to this but there are swings and roundabouts, and one that I see often is winter courses with tees very far forward allowing qualifying scores on days that are (and we do get them in winter) quite pleasant and dry when good scoring can be achieved. We had a group of guys come in and play our course last winter and complained that the MyEG app wouldn't let them register a round for handicap purposes. We told them that we had switched the functionality off, because the course did not meet the standards for a qualifying round. They wern't happy and said that sort of thing didn't happen at other courses when the tees were forward.
Yes, you are correct, CR. I meant that side of WHS in general was fine. I'm just opposed to the volatility of the HI calculation as it currently stands. Far too simplistic and easily abused.
I like WHS but I think most of what you have put I am in agreement with.....
To be fair it gives everyone a decent chance to be creative about their handicap.
Had this argument with a SG official when WHS launched, said there had to be a winter period, he was having none of it, devoid of thought and a slavish followeer of R&A dictat. We subsequently found out that virtually every state in the USA has a winter period, but no, not Scotland. He's the same prat who has stated that competition divisions should be split by CH and not playing handicap, creating the ludicrous situation where two players with the same PH can be in different divisions (thankfully most clubs seem to have been using common sense on this one)
Interesting your use of the word dictat. Ever since WHS was introduced it does feel that clubs have let themselves become part of a hierarchy. The Golfing UNION of Ireland is now called Golf Ireland. The word Union is no longer applicable it seems. Each golf club still has the ability to decide for itself what makes for the fairest way to run their competitions but they often have pedants on committee who are happy to be told what to do rather than think for themselves. If the R&A doesn't start to work with and for the core club golfers there may come a time when their hierarchy is tree of empty placeholders.
Not quite. Golf Ireland was formed in 2019 by the merger of the Irish Ladies Golf Union and the Golfing Union of Ireland.
Yes, widening the focus of an organisation often sees it losing its worth. Tempting to get into the whole One Club thing but I'm not going there. Suffice to say that the majority of ladies at my club are not happy.
Amazing.
This. Pretty much all our Saturday comps (and all trophy comps) are medals. In our 36 hole Captains comp this year, a high handicapper lost out by 2 shots in the 36 hole aggregate after a 14 at the notorious SI 1 par 5.