Stroke Index 18

[Slab]

I must admit, as a 13/14 capper it does annoy me that 90% of the holes I don't get shots on are par 3s. It's led to me not really liking par 3s anymore. Baffles me that I could not receive a shot on a 160 par 3 as you say, but I do get one on a par 4 that's only a drive and wedge. I'd rather the other way round as you've more margin for error and more options on the short par 4.

Yeah similar handicap to you and same annoyance
If better players & tour pros have shown us anything its that par 3's are (typically) harder to make 'par' than it is on the 4's & 5's
Yet as soon as a player shows signs of basic competence at this game then they (too often) lose shots on par 3's first

 

[Springveldt]

I must admit, as a 13/14 capper it does annoy me that 90% of the holes I don't get shots on are par 3s. It's led to me not really liking par 3s anymore. Baffles me that I could not receive a shot on a 160 par 3 as you say, but I do get one on a par 4 that's only a drive and wedge. I'd rather the other way round as you've more margin for error and more options on the short par 4.

I can understand that but par 3's are usually the hardest hole for all golfers, not just mid/high handicappers so you have to take match play into account. Even as a mid single digit I miss more greens than I hit on them, especially my old club with narrow, long greens and long par 3's.

You would have hated the club I've just left (@rudebhoy is still a member) as it's the par 3's that make the course tough imho but the stroke indexes for 3 of them are 15, 17 and 18. The SI 18 is the 2nd hole, they can make is shorter at about 155 but then you have bunkers on both sides only 9 yards apart. If you want to play safe you either hit a club you know will come up short or you need an extra club to make sure you carry the right hand bunker. The SI 15 is a 195 yard hole with a green that has bunkers on each side 19 yards apart and with the wind typically blowing straight across left to right. Such a ridiculous stroke index. The SI 17 is the shortest of them playing anywhere between 145-165 with the usual pin placements but is surrounded by trees with the wind typically into and off the left. If you go above the trees the ball just stalls, if you keep it under you can end up being in the crap behind if it's a back pin. Just really tricky par 3's. The other 2 par 3's are even harder.

Anytime I played the par 3's in 3+ or better I thought I had played them really well.

When my mate was +2 he would complain all the time about giving shots back at 2 par 3's, I can kinda see his point with the SI 18 being the 2nd hole. The first real birdie chance after the 2nd is the par 5 6th which he always felt he had to birdie to get back on track.

 

[Pants]

I recall playing Hever many years ago and their score card had two sets of index - one for stroke play where they were in line with difficulty, and the other for matchplay where index allocation guidance applied.

 

[Orikoru]

I can understand that but par 3's are usually the hardest hole for all golfers, not just mid/high handicappers so you have to take match play into account. Even as a mid single digit I miss more greens than I hit on them, especially my old club with narrow, long greens and long par 3's.

You would have hated the club I've just left (@rudebhoy is still a member) as it's the par 3's that make the course tough imho but the stroke indexes for 3 of them are 15, 17 and 18. The SI 18 is the 2nd hole, they can make is shorter at about 155 but then you have bunkers on both sides only 9 yards apart. If you want to play safe you either hit a club you know will come up short or you need an extra club to make sure you carry the right hand bunker. The SI 15 is a 195 yard hole with a green that has bunkers on each side 19 yards apart and with the wind typically blowing straight across left to right. Such a ridiculous stroke index. The SI 17 is the shortest of them playing anywhere between 145-165 with the usual pin placements but is surrounded by trees with the wind typically into and off the left. If you go above the trees the ball just stalls, if you keep it under you can end up being in the crap behind if it's a back pin. Just really tricky par 3's. The other 2 par 3's are even harder.

Anytime I played the par 3's in 3+ or better I thought I had played them really well.

When my mate was +2 he would complain all the time about giving shots back at 2 par 3's, I can kinda see his point with the SI 18 being the 2nd hole. The first real birdie chance after the 2nd is the par 5 6th which he always felt he had to birdie to get back on track.

I guess that's the problem right there - stroke indexes were obviously designed for matchplay, and make sense on that basis, but 90% of golf played nowadays is strokeplay. Particularly Stableford for me which is where the stroke index makes a difference. I played a course once where they had different SIs for matchplay and strokeplay, which makes sense, but seems to be very rare (we had a topic about that once). Ultimately we just need to ignore the indexes in Stableford the way we do in medals, but it's easier said than done.

My course's indexes are a little messed up anyway, because we lost a short par 4 that was SI 17, and in its place they built a 160-yard par 3, and the indexes haven't been updated yet. Our 210 yard monster of a par 3 is SI 7 though so that's alright.

 

[simsini]

Stroke index 18 at Bearsted is a 508 yard par 5. It's a dogleg left, but downhill and quite open compared to the rest of the course.

 

[Crow]

Our par 3s are SI 6, 4, 15 & 11
The SI 4 is 149 yards from the back and 140 from the yellows. On the ladies card it's SI 14 and 127 yards.

 

[Orikoru]

When I played The Hertsmere the other week, we had a 417 yard (off yellows) par 4 that was stroke index 2. Off the reds it was only 367 yards, plus they made it a par 5 instead - but it was still stroke index 2! I found that completely baffling. Surely if you put the par up you should change the stroke index as well? The SIs on some other holes had changed for the reds. But here they had a 367 yard par 5 playing stroke index 2. So weird. My wife was playing, she managed a pretty straightforward 6, which netted her 4 points!

 

[jim8flog]

Our par 5 5th 517/503 is SI 17 (difficulty)
and
our par 5 16 495/448 is SI 18 (difficulty)

The 16th in particular is only a par 5 based upon difficulty of the layout (trees right, trees and OB left) tight line in to the green due to trees either side.

 

[jim8flog]

When will people recognise that the SI of a hole does not necessarily reflect it's difficulty?

That depends on whether or not the SIs have been set up for difficulty or match play.

We tried 2 cards but ended reverting to just one based upon difficulty.

Getting difficulty right is very easy, it is just a press of a button on a computer.

 

[rudebhoy]

Makes sense as I think it’s the easiest hole on the course with a typical wind. I’m sure it’s the hole I had the lowest scoring average on.

The current SI 18 never made sense to me as it’s a 160 yard par 3 that I hit the green less than 30% of the time.

I can see how the par 5 in question would be relatively easy for a single figure handicapper, but it's a different proposition for high handicappers who need to play 3 or 4 decent shots in a row to be in with a chance of a par, as opposed to only having to hit one decent shot on the par 3. I know I tend to score better on the par 3s than on the par 5s.

It does beg an interesting question - when the powers that be change the SI, do they base their decision on what low handicappers typically score, or all players?

As an aside, when we were discussing this the other day, one of the seniors stated that way back in the dim and distant past, SIs were mainly decided simply on the length of each hole, with the longest hole getting the lowest SI. Not sure if that's correct?

 

[D-S]

When our SIs are reallocated next year, a par 5 that is currently SI 7 will become SI 18. Both course rating data and real world scores support that it is the easiest hole in relation to par.

Our other par 5s will be similarly reallocated from low to high, and our shortest par 3 hole will change from SI 18 to SI 11.

Is that in relation to net or gross par?

 

[chrisd]

When will people recognise that the SI of a hole does not necessarily reflect it's difficulty?

In the list of SI setting I believe that difficulty is quite low.

There's talk that our 2nd, which is the hardest hole in competitions, may be made stroke index one, I figure our low handicappers may moan when they're giving a shot away in a match play tied after 18 holes, on the second hole rather than currently, the third.

 

[Arthur Wedge]

When will people recognise that the SI of a hole does not necessarily reflect it's difficulty?

It’s an interesting concept that sort of changed

The old ideas of how a SI is worked out based only on matchplay and how SI should be distributed has changed

We have just done an assessment using the data from comps and have changed the SI’s to reflect the scoring over the years

 

[Morfeen75]

Anything over SI6 i rarely take notice of. If i am at an away course i circle 1-6 on my card then concentrate on playing golf.

It often annoys me when a chomper will say something like" ooh i get 2 shots on this hole" then proceeds to play the hole like they've never held a club before. Just hit the ball and let the score take care of itself.

 

[Albo]

In the list of SI setting I believe that difficulty is quite low.

There's talk that our 2nd, which is the hardest hole in competitions, may be made stroke index one, I figure our low handicappers may moan when they're giving a shot away in a match play tied after 18 holes, on the second hole rather than currently, the third.

I’m not sure I understand the last bit of this, there is only a very small number of circumstances when making SI 1 the second hole would have any real difference in a match, that’s for people who don’t get any shots in the course, anyone who gets a single shot or better will stroke on that particular hole so as say a 6 HCI I’d be happy to have SI one very early in the round

 

[rulie]

What happened to the "triad" system for stroke allocations that is recommended in the WHS manual?

 

[IanMcC]

What happened to the "triad" system for stroke allocations that is recommended in the WHS manual?

That's what we used to allocate stroke indexes in 2022. I checked today. All indexes within 3 of empirical difficulty still. Works very well.

 

[jim8flog]

What happened to the "triad" system for stroke allocations that is recommended in the WHS manual?

People with any sense ignored it

Seriously - it is a recommendation only.

 

[chrisd]

I’m not sure I understand the last bit of this, there is only a very small number of circumstances when making SI 1 the second hole would have any real difference in a match, that’s for people who don’t get any shots in the course, anyone who gets a single shot or better will stroke on that particular hole so as say a 6 HCI I’d be happy to have SI one very early in the round

Two players, say a 5 h/C v a 10 h/C get to the second extra hole and the 5 h/C gets a shot. Surely a low handicapper would like our current situation where he'd not need to give the first shot until the 3rd

 

[Neilds]

Two players, say a 5 h/C v a 10 h/C get to the second extra hole and the 5 h/C gets a shot. Surely a low handicapper would like our current situation where he'd not need to give the first shot until the 3rd

If I ever got to 5 handicap, I would be more annoyed I wasn't winning in 18 holes without having to worry about extra holes.