New handicap system

and why would you refuse membership to this bandit?

What needs to be asked here

Well as somebody who's never recorded a casual round in their own club, I have done so in others that I would consider special and worthy of recording. So this year Mount Juliet and a number of courses in Portugal. All of them brought my handicap down, so there's that. Another thing I've come across (and wouldn't even have thought of it) is that five day members play them as they don't have access to weekend comps without paying more. Or perhaps they're not available at weekends, but you get the idea. I can also understand a lad playing one if they can't make a weekend comp, but not regularly.

There's also the stated objective of allowing casual rounds which is to encourage people to keep their handicaps up to date.

I can sort of understand the overall comp thing, but you have to have the numbers to make that work. And that really doesn't deal with the real or perceived problems with major comps that will of necessity have an overall prize. And these are the ones that get brought up time and again. Somebody winning the Tuesday Open or the Friday nine hole really isn't it.

Big monetary value prizes isn't something all clubs have (in my experience). In fact if I was to point fingers, it's the 'specials' like rumbles and team events that seem to get rogered the most. We had one in our club and a group of visitors turned in an eye-watering score that had never even been come within an asses roar of before and walked away with the top prize. That still rankles with me because I knew we were taken for a ride. But you learn and move on and we'll never be caught like that again. And I still might send their card to their h/cap sec. 😈

Yes, if your intention when starting out is to play casually, that's what you'll do. And 'casual' is actually not the correct word to use in this context, they're called general play rounds for a reason. Any time I play another course, it's usually an open competition, but that's not always possible. I'm not going to play that course, taking extra shots and hitting two or three from the tee or doing putting practice whilst having a laugh with my mates. I'm going to take it seriously because I've paid good money to play there and I'm damned if I'm walking off that course not knowing whether I played it well or not.

Ok I hear you.

It just seems it ain't for me, nor any of the gang I'd regularly play golf with in my club.

On a trip away to Donegal, out if a group 11 troops spanning 4 different golf clubs, I heard after the first game, one of the lads decided he was gonna casual count his round for handicap purposes and spent the 1st 7 holes in a flap of the GI app not working so he didn't know his CH or PH or whatever. The others just telling him yer nuts just enjoy the views yer on holidays.

Anyway, each to one's own

Yeah, that's fair. If I was to play a GP round in my club I'd have difficulty keeping my concentration going. Having said that, I'd like to try it with a particular goal in mind such as beating my previous best or something like that. But it would be difficult in an environment where you're normally used to playing competitively and that element isn't there. Much easier at an away club where you have to concentrate because it's unfamiliar.

9 hole comp and placing in place in fairways yesterday yet it still appears to be a counting comp! All the 22 and 21 pointers getting nice little cuts for their efforts yesterday

What an absolute clown.

The only thing that doesn't sound right with this story is the 5 days a week thing - to attest a round, you still need a guy to play with you. He still had to put himself on time sheet - and get someone to attest ?

Anyway it is all sad - because it is very useful for people with different work lives , to be able to maintain their handicap when they can not get into club comps.

Look it is a system of honor and designed with the assumption of honesty - impossible for a system to consider human nature and the madness of Irish people.

But again - whilst I love the idea of being able to enter a self made counting event, when the club stuff is out of reach. It just ignores the reality of human nature - and going down 3 times with your mate - and have say 3 counting events in week , none of them with a 3rd party , you are on a temporary bad run of golf (and know this) / playing casual stuff - seems very odd / uncomfortable for me.

But cheaters - will cheat.

He was up playing 9 or 10 holes five times a week. We’re under no obligation to hand in casual/practice round cards in our club. He wasn’t entering competitions and then when he started entering again he was a scratch golfer getting shots that he shouldn’t have been. Hosed up in a couple of competitions including Captains Prize and Presidents Prize.

He handed in terrible cards to get his shots back, took time out from competition but played a few hundred holes of golf and then came back with a bang. To then have the audacity to throw his toys out of the pram and accuse a young chap of being dishonest (when he wasn’t being dishonest. I played with the young chap a couple of times and his handicap was correct). From a grown man, absolutely pathetic behaviour and made even worse from the fact he’s a cheating bastard himself.

Yeah. I think we need to drop the word 'casual' from this. Casual implies very little interest in the outcome and you're just out for the craic.

What would you consider as low guys? Old category 1 or < scratch ?

It's impossible to balance stopping people manipulating their handicap with designing a system that gives people a fair handicap. Because for 1, where that balance should lie is a matter of debate - some people want it made far more difficult to increase your handicap and some are happy that the handicap will reflect someone's playing ability quicker than the old system did. And secondly, what is a fair handicap is also a matter of debate - some feel it's whatever someone will have a reasonable chance of hitting 36 points from next Sunday and some feel it's whatever someone will have a reasonable chance of hitting 36 points from when they practice, play regularly and play smart.

I also agree with Fixedpitchmark above that the prizes are too large in Ireland. Do we really need golf bags, shoes, etc as prizes? I don't understand why they need to be as large as that. It definitely gives people motivation to cheat.

I used to always know (ball park) if a round was going bad that I might be able to dig in coming down the stretch and grind out something that might get me in the buffer. Playing now, it's easy to give up when a round has gotten away from you. There is nothing to play for anymore by digging in. The score is just not going to count ☹️ BUT... the problem is when you have a few of them and all of a sudden your good rounds are dropping out of your counting scores, one or 2 of these bad ones which you had given up on are now counting. You really need to change the mindset now and fight hard on every game you play. I've struggled with this concept and now find myself in this position and I'm not happy because my handicap now reflects to many poor scores and doesn't take any account of any potential I have. Wasn't it always said that your handicap is not something you should be shooting every week, but rather 1 in 8 goes or something like that?

I'm happy to share my handicap trend here which for me, highlights a big flaw with the WHS.

I've hovered around the 12 mark for a fair few years now. I'm a streaky player, I don't really practice but I can hit the shots. It's just that I am not consistent. So on balance I'll usually get a few cuts in a year and a few .1's back to generally even things out. Last year, I was out of work and was playing twice or even 3 times a week. I could have a run of a great 9 holes but always found it hard to stitch 18 together. However the more I was playing the more consistent I was getting. In over 30 years, the best score I've ever shot on my home course was +10. I was off 13 in August 2020 and matched my best ever score to win the captains prize with 39 points. Pretty fair I think you will all agree. The following week I shot an even better score of +8 to win again. I hit a purple patch and my handicap was cut to 9.5 with the aid of an ESR. A few buffer rounds and a few .1's followed and when WHS was turned on I think I was 10.3 under CONGU. Overnight I jumped to 11.6.

Golf this year for me was different. Work is flat out and a hard labour job in my garden with nearly all of my spare time left me physically tired and aching when I played. So my scores were not really any way good, but that's not to say I didn't have a few decent holes. I have now gone out to 14.3 which is a joke. This give me 16 shots on my away course (which I actually find easier because it's more forgiving). I am way better than that. I have played in captains prize there and even failed to qualify. I would really love to win a medal there I haven't even been close, (even when it was won with a 70 last month). So it should be clear to see that I'm not gaming the system when I can't even qualify or feature in the ones I really want to win when I have 6 more shots than I had at the same time last year. I've just been poor lately and WHS has destroyed my handicap and to be honest a bit of my confidence has gone when I think about having so many shots. I would be worse only for the fact that 4 of my best 8 were from general play scores submitted (mainly playing with boards). My best counting score this year was as close to a practice round as you can get which was a 9 hole with my neighbour registering a 10.1 SD.

So the new system! Fundamentally I think it is a good, simple and fair system, but it has its flaws with the main one being that there is to much fluctuation allowed. Going out 3 soft shots or 5 hard shots is to much and opens the door to manipulation, but not everyone is manipulating it as I have demonstrated. However, I know if I go out now and shoot a score that I and most people who play golf with me, know I'm capable of shooting, there will be daggers thrown at me.

So how do we fix it?

Well firstly, I don't think we should be reinventing the wheel yet again. We have a system now that is used around the world, so lets keep it like that but lets tweak it. As we know WHS quite simply gives us an average of our best 8 Score Differentials out of our last 20 rounds. For some people, those 20 rounds might just go back to September but for others they could go back years. WHS allows us to go back 3 years.

Sure we want a reflection of our current form but we also want something in there to reflect our ability.

As it stands the basis of how much ones handicap can go up is the lowest HI with in the last 12 months. In my opinion this is where the flaws and manipulation stem from so lets change it. We have 3 years records on file, let's use them. What is the average of our best 8 scores over those 3 years? We can use this as a reflection of our ability and nobody should be allowed to drift anymore than 3 shots from that with no need to worry about hard and soft caps as they are just messy and unnecessary.

So what does this do for an honest golfer like myself. Well I've worked out my best 8 score average of the last 3 years and it's 8.7. My HI should be capped at 11.7. A fair reflection of my current dip in form, but also notes that I have potential to do better.

And what does it do for the guy who wants to game the system and throw in a few decent attempts each year to win a big one. Well it stops him from washing those scores out nice and quickly and jumping his HI.

Would agree. There are mainly two type of golfers, those who play to get their handicaps down and those who play to win comps and see handicaps as an aid to doing this. The latter are the problem and there isn't much that can be done, although I would cap the amount of shots that can be regained in a season at 2 perhaps.

I play to try and get cut, that's my prize. Anything else is a bonus, but handicap is more important to me. I think most people who play a lot of golf are the same. Anyone solely chasing prizes is going to have a lot of disappointments with the scores coming in, even those with a bloated handicap.

In our President's Prize a few weeks ago, I would have needed to shoot -13 gross to win. 59.

From reading comments on here and other threads over the year, there seems to be (anecdotally) issues in some clubs and not others. I don't know if that's a culture thing, city vs smaller area thing (where people might be more anonymous in a Dublin club for example and "get away" with being a bandit more so than a small town) or just a group of bad eggs in a club. My club has had very few huge winning scores - we did have an issue with a bandit cleaning up this year but he has always been a bandit and I suspect the club are going to do something about it now.

Also, this was year 1 of the new system. They were never going to foresee every issue.

Bit more than anecdotally given the believable evidence posted above