Your New WHS Index

Unfortunately no. They're not played on a rated course. I don't even think there's scope in the system for them to be rated. And there's definitely not any capacity in the system for the raters to do it. They're flat out at the moment. We've been trying to get a set of tees rated for women since January. Obviously that couldn't happen then, but renewed the request over two months ago and still waiting.

Edit: Clubs should really avoid doing this. I understand the desire to have competitions of a reasonable length and cutting back on the number of holes to take account of the shorter days, but it does lead to this kind of thing.

If you look at the calculations required for nine hole scores to be converted to 18 hole score differentials, you would get an idea of how difficult it would be to do the same for a random collection of holes that are neither nine or eighteen.

Given what we've achieved with technology, it shouldn't be that hard to come up with a program that's relatively easy to use/adjust to non 9 or 18 hole comps.

That's aimed at those in charge of the system rather than a club or HC sec.

The competition is set up as an 18 hole event on the computer. The players play the 12 or 15 holes and the remaining holes are marked as did not play. The score is scaled up to an 18 hole score as per rule 3.2 of the rules of handicapping and it goes on your WHS record.

Non qualifying events do not appear on your WHS record.

Gotta be 9 or 18 to be counting, afaik.

Yeah I know, I remember we discussed this earlier in the thread. Holes not played must be marked as such to get the correct scaled up 18 hole score.

Had my best score in a while recently playing a casual 9 but didn’t get the score differential I was expecting

playing of yellows for which my playing handicap is 24

aftwr my differential came in higher than I expected I noticed that my PH on front 9 only is 10 and back 9 only is 11 which adds up to 21 - where do the other shots go?

One of the local regulars was cut 3 shots over the weekend (from 12 to 9). He was level par for a 15 hole comp (non-qualifying) and pissed home. No entry on his GI profile for that comp but I can see the actual HC is lower than what's on the graph. His previous best counting score was 83. I've played with him once before, an older gent who wouldn't hit it miles but has a tidy enough short game. Wouldn't have picked him out as capable of that kind of score but we'll have our day in the sun. I believe the only local rule at the time was lift, clean replace on fairways fwiw.

When you play a 9 hole round of golf for handicap purposes, the software has to convert that into an 18 hole round of golf and rather than just mirror the back 9 with the same score as you had on the front 9, it takes the same 9 holes as you just played, and gives you nett pars on every hole, except the first hole, where it gives you a nett bogey.

The reason it does this is because it assumes that people are going to do better over 9 holes, than they would over 18 holes. so whatever score you have for the front 9, it gives you a nett 17 stableford points for your 2nd 9 holes. ( this works the other way too, if you have a **** front 9, it assumes you will do better on the back and give you 17)

So take your recent 9 hole scores and applying this formula to it from that link ::

9 hole score differential Conversion = (113 / 9 hole slope rating) * (( 9 hole adjusted gross + 9 hole par + 9 hole handicap + 1 ) - (9 hole course rating * 2) - (2 * 0.5 * PCC))

This is a calculation I did for one of my 9 hole scores in Athlone

126 = 9 hole slope of course

41 = 9 hole adjusted gross

36.9 = 9 hole stroke rating

8.3 = score differential

0 = PCC

5 = your course handicap

9 hole score differential Conversion = (113 / 9 hole slope rating) * (( 9 hole adjusted gross + 9 hole par + 9 hole handicap + 1 ) - (9 hole course rating * 2) - (2 * 0.5 * PCC))

113/126 * ((41 + 36 + 5 + 1 ) - (36.9 *2 ) - 0)

113/126 * (83-73.8)

0.8968 * 9.2 = 8.25056 which rounds up to 8.3

Apologies if that was really long winded, but thats how it works out. Plug your own details into the formula and see if it works out :)

Interesting article in Tuesday's Irish Times.

Was it interesting? If you've been reading the thread here or keeping an eye on it in general there's very little in it you wouldn't already know.

What I was hoping for were some figures. There are none in there. And the focus seems to be on the really big handicaps, whereas most of the anecdotes I've heard of fellas winning the big comps with ridiculous scores have been the guys who should be single digits, but are mid teens instead.

I'm looking forward to seeing some actual data on it. But I'm not confident I will any time soon if at all. I'm not convinced people want it to be honest. I think people want to give out about the 30 handicappers and don't want to hear that they're not winning a disproportionate number of comps.

There are certainly several parts that I wasn't already aware of ...

"At other clubs limits have been brought in to say that the maximum handicap a player can play off in a competition is 28. Those with handicaps of more than 28 (the system now allows for indexes up to 54 for both men and women) are still allowed to play but can only receive 28 shots." 

I wasn't aware that this was happening.

Also the 54% having less than 20 cards is a surprise.

The GI spokesperson seems to be delivering the message "The system is fine. Any issues should be handled by the handicap committees"

I was listening to the Paddy Talks Golf podcast recently and he had an episode on WHS.

One of the answers he got from them was that the issues are mainly as a result of most people not having 20 cards in yet and therefore not having a "fully developed handicap."

Apparently once the majority of golfers have submitted all 20 cards, things will level out a bit more.

The same article mentioned that only 5% of scores submitted here were from general play, whereas in the USA, there was a more

balanced mix of scores, between competition and general play rounds. It seemed to indicate that the WHS system was designed

to work best on a mix of the two.

it carries over if you change clubs