Your New WHS Index

I'd agree about the course ratings. I've played harder courses (ratings wise) than my home course and had better scores. When you take into account that these were unfamiliar courses for me, that shouldn't be happening.

I've learned some things about the course rating system this year through conversations with Golf Ireland that don't fill me with confidence in the system. Firstly, some of these ratings are up to ten years old. Some are even more than that. Secondly (and very strangely imo) the USGA holds the hole by hole ratings for Irish courses - hole by hole ratings are supposed to be used when setting the stroke index for each hole.

So it seems to me that the data from which the course ratings were derived, were actually assessed by the USGA and presumably set by them too. Not exactly what you'd call local knowledge there. I've no reason to doubt this and in fact, this is reinforced by the fact that the course ratings for courses in Ireland were first published on the USGA website.

That's quite likely to be true also. They'd be unlikely to be able to manage to do all the courses in Ireland in three years, let alone every year. I'm waiting almost two years now just to have one set of tees rated. I have an email from them from earlier in the year to say we were on the list of this year, but it never happened. They usually do this between April and September, so I'll be waiting until at least April next year now.

Just wondering if your clubs have cut people after carrying out their annual WHS Handicap Review?

Our has and I was surprised by it. They cut people who actually deserved a cut too. They’ve been building up their handicap since the WHS was introduced while winning prizes in winter time, fourball competition & playing on club team.

Ours has. Well me and the rest of the hcap committee. 😁

There's lots of data available now. It's hard work, but the reports and data help a lot. I shudder to think how it could have been done before computers and scoring software arrived.

Yeah ours has from what I've heard, not just cuts though, people have got shots back also.

I know one guy who got a letter last week about his cut, so presumably we've done ours.

Are the cuts this year generally larger or smaller than pre WHS, has anyone noticed ? Without being a contrarian on this, I'm not against annual review at all, but with your H/C regenerating itself completely every 20 rounds, I sort of struggle to see the relevance of it anymore. With your handicap basically being a rolling average of how you're playing at a point in time, it seems kinda redundant tbh. At least under CONGU a 2 or 3 shot cut would take years to get back whereas now someone could be back out by May (intentionally or unintentionally - I mean, how many people start off the season playing well in March/April ?).

Or is it just a legacy of the "penalty for winning" that PARlance mentions above ? I've never bought into that tbh if its for singles competitions, if player x didn't win, player y would have etc. Team events and fourballs etc, of course they should be looked at.

Under what circumstances would someone need a revision up? I'd have thought if they've less than 20 scores, then you've too little data to warrant a revision up. Obviously if there's something like an injury that's fair enough, but I wouldn't have thought that would fall under annual review. If have hoped that would be sooner.

And as for revisions down - other than someone gaming the system why would you review them down?

Auld lads north of 80 years of age who cant play to the 30 handicap they already have. We do a good few of those up revisions as they aint getting any longer off the tee.

They might not play a lot of competitions though. Still not playing enough counting golf to get a meaningful increase in their handicap. An up revision for them boys will just make the game that bit more enjoyable for them. Not everyone plays a competition every weekend

Yeah. There are a few things that aren't caught under WHS. As @PARlance noted above, players in inter-club teams that reach finals are all looked at, there's a form specifically for that cohort sent out by Golf Ireland. Then there's results from competitions that are non-qualifying, like matchplay, some winter NQ comps etc. All of those need to be looked at as well.

You also get a report on players flagged for variations in their scores against HI; either up or down for the year. Mostly there's no issue there, but they do have to be looked at. And you have the improving golfer who's not played a lot of golf - maybe 10-15 counting rounds in the year, so some of their index is calculated from last year. Same the other way.

One other thing to note is that there are sometimes large variances between the individual scores making up a handicap index. A consistent golfer will have these on a bell curve, but others might be deviating a lot. It may not be manipulation, but it bears scrutiny.

Do you not have domestic winter handicaps?

Nope nothing happens if you shoot the lights out from November to April

We do an internal cut to a max of 1 stroke for each of our two leagues. But any miracle scores are also looked at during the annual handicap review and taken into account when assessing any adjustments. Anything of 40 points or over in NQ is looked at. Enough other factors and the SD is calculated and added to the pile.

To be fair, during winter, we would have quite a lot of qualifying competitions. Depends on the weather. Last year about a third were NQ.

Is there clean & place everywhere on your course? From my understanding, in winter golf for handicapping purposes to be acceptable the preferred lies local rule only applies to areas cut to fairway height or less within 6" of the original spot

I am open to correction however.

Competition Committees can implement a system to take points off Competition winners to constrain repeat wins.

Handicaps Committees can make cuts to golfers scoring better than their handicap during non-qualifying. This is effectively cutting on observation. They just need to decide where a reasonable bar height is if scoring is generally higher during non-qualifying.