Should CSS be jibbed?

[Imurg]

I do understand that but it does seem the most pragmatic way to assess how the course was playing without resorting to gauging wind speeds and stimp readings. If a lot of pros shoot in the 60's at a tour event what do you conclude about the course even if a few poor souls have a mare?


Also what about the fair weather golfers? .

You can't really bring the Pro game into this as they all play off scratch and par is the baseline. An easy course will have a low under par average and a tricky one will have a higher Ave. It bears no resemblance to how handicap golfers will play it as we wouldn't play that course.

I'm not convinced that weather plays as much part in scoring as many think.
Extremes are obviously going to have a detrimental effect on numbers but normal variances of weather ...I don't think we're good enough to take advantage or bad enough for them to make us much worse.
Many times I've played in comps in what would be considered perfect conditions only for nobody to break nett par or top the list with 33 points. Conversely, many times the wind has been up, some rain in the air and low 40's wins the day....
Heavy rain and wind for the front 9 - decimates your card along with half the field, a late started has no extremes and shoots a nett SSS score.
Because half the field or more had bad weather and poor scores CSS goes up 3 he gets a hefty cut for playing to handicap......
Or reverse it. You battle through the elements to post a buffer score first thing but then, in the pm times, everyone shoots the lights out, CSS goes down and the first player goes up 0.1 for making buffer...

I will never be persuaded CSS is needed......

 

[delc]

True but at least your handicap would be based on how well you play and not influenced by how everyone else plays...

How else could you assess the difficulty of the course on a given day? Provided you have a representative number of players in a competition, CSS should work pretty well. It won't work for very small fields or individual rounds, which is why it reverts to SSS in those circumstances.

 

[Imurg]

How else could you assess the difficulty of the course on a given day? .

Why do you need to?
The difficulty has been assessed (SSS).
Your original handicap was assessed to that, with no adjustment for what the weather was doing or how anyone else played on that day.
Play to SSS. Beat it - get cut. Shoot outside buffer - go up.
Simples.

 

[Norrin Radd]

Why do you need to?
The difficulty has been assessed (SSS).
Your original handicap was assessed to that, with no adjustment for what the weather was doing or how anyone else played on that day.
Play to SSS. Beat it - get cut. Shoot outside buffer - go up.

^^^^^^^^^this
and the new slope system will take care of playing courses that are harder or easier than your own .

 

[Hosel Fade]

Why do you need to?
The difficulty has been assessed (SSS).
Your original handicap was assessed to that, with no adjustment for what the weather was doing or how anyone else played on that day.
Play to SSS. Beat it - get cut. Shoot outside buffer - go up.

^^^^^^^^^this
and the new slope system will take care of playing courses that are harder or easier than your own .

But European clubs with Slope Ratings and Course Handicaps still use an equivalent to CSS (not sure if the calculation is the same, but would imagine so)

 

[pbrown7582]

i dont get the point of this thread.

if lots of others played/scored well, that suggest the conditions were good to enable such scoring. Seems fair to me

Don't be bitter, just play better.

Just This ^^^^^

 

[User62651]

True but at least your handicap would be based on how well you play and not influenced by how everyone else plays...

Not quite everyone, category 4 golfers are excluded from CSS calculation. CSS is weighted heavily to cat 1 players performance on the day, less so to cat 2 then even less to cat 3 players. Cat 1 players show most consistency so how tough a course is playing is easiest assessed by looking at them.

 

[patricks148]

its swings and roundabouts, if you play at an easier course the scoring will be lower..... because its easier.

I was a member at a parkland course local to me and i had to score 36 points just to make buffer and the winning score would always be mid 40's.

 

[patricks148]

Not quite everyone, category 4 golfers are excluded from CSS calculation. CSS is weighted heavily to cat 1 players performance on the day, less so to cat 2 then even less to cat 3 players. Cat 1 players show most consistency so how tough a course is playing is easiest assessed by looking at them.

I thought they changed this and cat 4 are now part of the calc

 

[chrisd]

Lets say you ditch css but your course is par 72 sss 70. You still won't get cut for 37 pts.

IT isnt

 

[guest100718]

IT isnt

Thats fine but if you play 5 comps in a row that would have gone RO but under your system you'd get .5 back. are you OK with that too?

 

[Hosel Fade]

Any sight of wind or rain and no one would bother playing in the medal.

Exactly this

 

[User62651]

I thought they changed this and cat 4 are now part of the calc

Sorry, been out the game a while.

 

[Foxholer]

If you score 37pts you should get a cut. I don't care how easy the course played. I'll take all the .1s when it plays hard. But, reward success.

Ps. Please (mods) add a simple yes no vote to this 👍

Absolutely not! It's the only way to equate results from every comp at every club around the country!

There are quite a few Par 68 SSS 65 clubs scattered about the UK (I get the feeling there are more in Scotland than elsewhere). So 37 points would still be 2 points below standard anyway.

If you are feeling hard done by for your 37, then your target for a cut should always be (38 + Par - SSS)! That will guarantee a cut of 0.3 (for you) and possibly 0.6.

 

[Foxholer]

But European clubs with Slope Ratings and Course Handicaps still use an equivalent to CSS (not sure if the calculation is the same, but would imagine so)

Do they? Can you show some documentation about that?

The US system, which is the one that will be used, doesn't! It only uses Course Rating and Slope, so nothing that covers the way the course is playing on the day - at least not as far as i know, so would be happy to be corrected.

 

[Capella]

The German course rating system works differently to the British one, but it used to have the so called CBA (which stood for competition buffer adjustment, I think) which did a similar thing: adjust the number of points that gets a cut/buffers on a specific day, due to the overall performance of players on that day. They dropped it at the beginning of this year, so the conditions of play on that day do not influence the calculation of the handicap-cuts anymore.

 

[chrisd]

Thats fine but if you play 5 comps in a row that would have gone RO but under your system you'd get .5 back. are you OK with that too?

Yep

 

[Foxholer]

The German course rating system works differently to the British one, but it used to have the so called CBA (which stood for competition buffer adjustment, I think) which did a similar thing: adjust the number of points that gets a cut/buffers on a specific day, due to the overall performance of players on that day. They dropped it at the beginning of this year, so the conditions of play on that day do not influence the calculation of the handicap-cuts anymore.

Ah! Finally found some documentation on EGA handicapping!

Dropping of CBA may only be in Germany because it's still in EGA manual (http://www.ega-golf.ch/sites/default/files/epub_hcp_booklet_2016_3.11.2015.pdf) with similar action as Congu. According to the intro blurb, CBA has been modified for 2016-2019.

 

[Capella]

Ah! Finally found some documentation on EGA handicapping!

Dropping of CBA may only be in Germany because it's still in EGA manual (http://www.ega-golf.ch/sites/default/files/epub_hcp_booklet_2016_3.11.2015.pdf) with similar action as Congu. According to the intro blurb, CBA has been modified for 2016-2019.

Yes, afaik it was only dropped in Germany. The main argument was that quite a few rounds (for example 9-hole tournaments and EDS rounds (which are similar to supplementary cards)) are already played without the buffer adjustment anyway. And that players wanted to be able to calculate their score and resulting handicap based on their performance, without having to wait for all of the other results to come in.

 

[duncan mackie]

Ah! Finally found some documentation on EGA handicapping!

Dropping of CBA may only be in Germany because it's still in EGA manual (http://www.ega-golf.ch/sites/default/files/epub_hcp_booklet_2016_3.11.2015.pdf) with similar action as Congu. According to the intro blurb, CBA has been modified for 2016-2019.

Australia also does it.

However, it's not needed in most cases (IMO) because courses are rated to average summer conditions ie on the good side of average, and the most likely serious impact on scoring and handicapping on these systems (which use a rolling average) is downwards (really poor score in bad weather).
This in turn is taken care of by using the rolling average of the best X in Y calculation which completely ignores extreme bad scores, potentially quite a few of them!
So, a few really good scores in extremely good conditions may produce a slightly flattering handicap for a short period without one...not any problem that needs a fix to my mind.

This is said as a die hard proponent of CSS within the CONGU system, which for the reasons many have posted already.