WHS doesn't work

[wjemather]

Since It’s come in, I play less golf, hardly any comps and I’ve lost a lot of interest in what was my favourite thing. I actually hate WHS.

Your main problem seems to be basing your enjoyment of the sport around whatever your handicap is. That is never going to be healthy and presumably isn't why or how you started playing.

 

[Deleted member 30522]

That was why I said "not necessarily so". I was pointing out the possibility of combining matchplay and strokeplay to count for handicap in certain circumstances.

Only if it's strokeplay is the very pertinent point, and as the example you were responding to, very clear. It's a match, he can;t put in a card. If it was a medal he could arrange to also play a match.

 

[Deleted member 30522]

Are you suggesting that the expectation of players is bad weather = PCC of +1 or more?

Surely any misapprehensions are down to the failure of some clubs to disseminate/publicise the correct information.

It's down to the governing bodies to explain the calculation, they have refused to do so to date, so how can clubs disseminate something they have no access to?

 

[Deleted member 30522]

OK thanks. All very strange when matchplay is different from strokeplay.

Just to make sure you've got this:

1. If playing a medal you can also play a match (club rules permitting)
2. If playing a match, you cannot submit a general play card for handicap

 

[Golfist]

Your main problem seems to be basing your enjoyment of the sport around whatever your handicap is. That is never going to be healthy and presumably isn't why or how you started playing.

When I started golf it was to become a single figure golfer, that was my goal. I’ve done it and have been single figures for several years. So I do care about my handicap, yet, I have seen a decrease since WHS came in and I now feel completely and utterly unable to compete in a comp. I’m a steady golfer and my scores have kept my handicap around the same but I’m miles off in comps. So, I now play less comps and less golf overall.

 

[Golfist]

Once a month? It's weird how the experience differs from club to club. I've just looked at all the men's individual medal/stableford results at my club since 1st April.

Stableford
16 competitions
Average winning score: 38.8 pts
Highest score: 46
Scores in the 50s: none
Scores in the 40s: seven (four of which occurred in the same competition, only three out of sixteen comps have been won with scores in the 40s)

Medal
Seven competitions
Average winning score: 68.3 (net)
Lowest net score: 64
Net scores under 60: none
Net scores 60-69: ten (five of which were winning scores)

So, all season, we've had zero stableford scores in the 50s and zero net scores sub 60 - but you're getting either or both once a month!! What can account for a difference like that?

Someone was saying on Twitter a while back that it’s because of the CR and SR.

They were claiming Low SR gives low handicappers best chance of winning and high SR gives high handicappers best chance of winning. Lots more high handicappers and if playing at a course with high SR (so lots more shots for them) at least one of those HH‘s will blow the field away. They provided no numbers so no idea if they were right but it would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between submitted scores and CR/SR.

 

[Swango1980]

Someone was saying on Twitter a while back that it’s because of the CR and SR.

They were claiming Low SR gives low handicappers best chance of winning and high SR gives high handicappers best chance of winning. Lots more high handicappers and if playing at a course with high SR (so lots more shots for them) at least one of those HH‘s will blow the field away. They provided no numbers so no idea if they were right but it would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between submitted scores and CR/SR.

It should come as no surprise that higher handicappers will win more competitions (or score better) at many courses (especially with high slope) since WHS.

Pre WHS, the absolute difference between low and high handicappers was constant, regardless of where you played. The entire point of slope was to give higher handicappers a greater number of shots relative to low handicappers at courses that are relatively more difficult for them (high slope). Conversely, they get less shots at relatively easier courses (low slope). However, as most courses seem to have a slope higher than the base level slope (slope at standard difficulty) of 113, then higher handicappers will generally get a greater number of shots relative to the low handicapper compared to the difference in their Indices.

Some will argue that WHS now benefits high handicappers and is unfair. Others will argue that the previous system benefited lower handicappers and was unfair.

 

[wjemather]

When I started golf it was to become a single figure golfer, that was my goal. I’ve done it and have been single figures for several years. So I do care about my handicap, yet, I have seen a decrease since WHS came in and I now feel completely and utterly unable to compete in a comp. I’m a steady golfer and my scores have kept my handicap around the same but I’m miles off in comps. So, I now play less comps and less golf overall.

So your real gripe is that you no longer have a handicap system that gives you a significant built-in advantage in competitions.
Rest assured, Slope would have been adopted sooner rather than later had we retained UHS, so most of that unfair advantage would have disappeared anyway.

 

[wjemather]

It should come as no surprise that higher handicappers will win more competitions (or score better) at many courses (especially with high slope) since WHS.

As a group, higher handicappers should win more comps than lower handicappers - there are simply vastly more of them.
The anomaly is that this didn't happen previously (without Slope), not that it is happening now.

 

[Swango1980]

As a group, higher handicappers should win more comps than lower handicappers - there are simply vastly more of them.
The anomaly is that this didn't happen previously (without Slope), not that it is happening now.

I should have clarified, I wasn't talking about winners in absolute numbers. I was talking about the probability of a higher handicapper winning being higher now than it was pre-WHS.

 

[AussieKB]

A comp I played last week where I shot my age for the first time, there was one man there playing off 46
in my mind this is crazy, he was at least 10 years younger then me and had no visible injuries, is this where
golf is heading ? how long before the powers that be say no more handicap, go and get a lesson.

 

[Deleted member 29109]

When I started golf it was to become a single figure golfer, that was my goal. I’ve done it and have been single figures for several years. So I do care about my handicap, yet, I have seen a decrease since WHS came in and I now feel completely and utterly unable to compete in a comp. I’m a steady golfer and my scores have kept my handicap around the same but I’m miles off in comps. So, I now play less comps and less golf overall.

I’ve said it a million times, there is no such thing as serious competitive club competitions. You are ‘competing’ against a group of people who have a handicaps made up from any number of permutations and who are all playing to a different set of rules.

Handicap competitions aren’t really competitions at all, and as much practice as you put in. You have absolutely no control over whether you win or not. The outcome is almost random.

The closest you will get to proper competition is playing scratch events. That at least takes the HC problem out of the equation.
Play scratch KO evens and you are at least able to play to (almost) the same set of rules as the other guy.

If you want a proper competitive test. It’s you against the course. Playing to the rules and holing everything.

The previous HC was open to abuse and just as random. Clubs should be stipulating a minimum number of cards in a year for comp entry. If they are not, that is their fault, not a fault of the HC system.
To get angry about it is really not worth it.

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

As a group, higher handicappers should win more comps than lower handicappers - there are simply vastly more of them.
The anomaly is that this didn't happen previously (without Slope), not that it is happening now.

Plus in terms of stokes taken there is inevitably and almost inbuilt higher variability in the scores submiitted by higher handicappers. And as a stroke taken has the same counting value for the 30 handicapper as the scratch player that variability in the high handicapper plus the greater numbers of high handicappers mean that statistically a high guy amongst all the high guys will have his hot day. It’s just the nature of golf and how we score.

 

[Alan Clifford]

If WHS needs hard and soft caps and the 95% rule, then that should be evidence that the calculations behind it all aren’t very good and the system needs stabilisers to make it workable.

The system is full of convoluted arithmetic, some of it secret but at the end of the day, it's just an average. It's as though it were designed by people ignorant of mathematics but who were in awe of arithmetic.

To my mind, they missed the chance to implement some sort of series, along the lines of 90% of handicap + 10% of current game. That way, a game's influence gradually reduces - the previous game has only 90% of 10% and so on.That in itself is too simple I think but it is a methodology they could have adopted. You could even put something in there that aged the scores according to time as well.

WHS was an opportunity lost but that's what we've got.

 

[jim8flog]

If WHS needs hard and soft caps and the 95% rule, then that should be evidence that the calculations behind it all aren’t very good and the system needs stabilisers to make it workable.

With the UHS a player could put in Supplementary Score cards every time they played if they wanted to so could easily increase their handicap over a matter of weeks with no restriction on how high their handicap could go.

I see the soft and hard caps as good way of putting in some sort of barrier to player increasing their handicap by a very large amount.

Personally I am in favour of 95% and insist on players using in in the swindle I run. As a low handicap player you should also be in favour of the 95%.

 

[wjemather]

The system is full of convoluted arithmetic, some of it secret but at the end of the day, it's just an average. It's as though it were designed by people ignorant of mathematics but who were in awe of arithmetic.

An odd description for professional statisticians.

 

[Swango1980]

With the UHS a player could put in Supplementary Score cards every time they played if they wanted to so could easily increase their handicap over a matter of weeks with no restriction on how high their handicap could go.

I see the soft and hard caps as good way of putting in some sort of barrier to player increasing their handicap by a very large amount.

Personally I am in favour of 95% and insist on players using in in the swindle I run. As a low handicap player you should also be in favour of the 95%.

I'm not sure you are using the word "easily" in this situation very well.

Yes, players could submit supplementary scores. However, from the moment they submit that score, it had to be physically verified by someone on the Committee before touching their record. If their aim was to increase their handicap as quickly as they could with WHS, how "easy" do you think that would be?

If they were to try and increase it to something similar to the current hard cap (which is 5 shots to Index, but is often 6 shots extra to course handicap), they'd need to submit 50-60 scores. Every one of those scores would need to be outside their buffer zone, and they certainly would not want to submit a single good score amongst that. With WHS, it is easy to see a handicap increase by 3-4 shots in a few weeks, which would have been practically impossible under UHS.

 

[D-S]

With the UHS a player could put in Supplementary Score cards every time they played if they wanted to so could easily increase their handicap over a matter of weeks with no restriction on how high their handicap could go.

I see the soft and hard caps as good way of putting in some sort of barrier to player increasing their handicap by a very large amount.

Personally I am in favour of 95% and insist on players using in in the swindle I run. As a low handicap player you should also be in favour of the 95%.

There was a time under UHS where you could only submit one Supplementary score in every 7 day period and Cat 1 golfers couldn't submit them - I can't remember when this changed.

There seems to be a growing distrust of General Play Scores - not only at the elite level but now at the other end of the spectrum. Quite a few Clubs are demanding a set number of Competition scores over a period not just qualifying ones.

 

[Golfist]

So your real gripe is that you no longer have a handicap system that gives you a significant built-in advantage in competitions.
Rest assured, Slope would have been adopted sooner rather than later had we retained UHS, so most of that unfair advantage would have disappeared anyway.

I don‘t know what UHS is, I’m in the U.K. and we were under CONGU. No, I didn’t feel that it gave me an advantage before, never mind a significant one. I felt it was fair before and I certainly wasn’t cleaning up and only ever won 2 medals under CONGU ten years of play but at least I felt that I had a chance. Now I feel I have no chance whatsoever and it makes entering comps a completely worthless venture.

 

[Slab]

Are recent posts discussing a problem or highlighting a theoretical possibility

Are these 50 plus point comp winners a bunch of former 24 handicappers now playing off 29 h/cap (or similar rise) or do they have a different handicap profile