Is WHS fit for purpose

The thing is, everyone doesn't play the same amount of golf. So for one person, 20 rounds could be over a year's worth and for someone else, barely a few months. There has to be a realistic common denominator that gets it as accurate as possible for everyone.

Thought this was interesting and relevant to this discussion. Odds by handicap of shooting various scores.

Anyone called Seve will distort stats

Have you been buying up lottery tickets since? 🤣

Says the lad who's in the soft cap. 🤣

Recall sounds like a fun game though.

No soft cap in play.

9.0 is pre knee surgery and in 2021..

Came in10.5

50 plus counting rounds this year.

And still better than rest of country by 5%

.🤫

Golf Ireland doing something similar

https://irishgolfer.ie/latest-golf-news/2023/01/11/changes-to-golf-ireland-championship-qualification-criteria-announced/?mc_cid=0800722875&mc_eid=6150307cb1

The concern would be that some players may be artificially returning low scores in general play to keep their handicap low to enter elite competition. Conspiring with friends etc... then when it comes to the elite competition go out shoot a pair of 95s in qualifying as they are not up to the standard.

A low handicap player may feel more relaxed in general play and produce better scores than they would over 18 holes in a competition. The birdies might flow a bit better

To enter any of the top amateur competitions or prestigious senior scratch cups, they basically take the lowest X players. So now there is apparently an issue with players off low handicaps handing in very low general play scores to get their handicaps down and get themselves into these competitions. They then go out and shoot terrible scores. It's not for team golf.

it treats stroke play the same though for handicap purposes

if you shot a 20 on a hole, it was never going to count the 20, so nothing has changed there

on the day for the purposes of the competition, it counts, but that hasn't changed

Not sure I'd agree that we primarily play Stableford in Ireland, maybe depends on the player and the club but vast majority of the comps I play in are stroke play not stableford. All majors, monthly medals etc. are strokes where I play. Theres plenty of stableford comps during the year allright but they wouldn't have as many entrants generally and prizes would be smaller. I don't think any of them count for our player of the year points either. I'd have thought thats largely the same in most nearby courses anyway.

Fair points, i hadn't thought of mid week comps as I don't ever play those really but i wouldn't be including winter months given its non counting pretty much everywhere. Strokes would be truly pointless given the number of random lost balls due to the weather.

As I said I think it depends on the club and the player but i certainly notice the opposite at my club in terms of getting a tee time, medals and majors are more popular than stableford, quick glance at master scoreboard confirms that those comps have more entries than the subsequent stableford comps though I haven't checked every competition. I wouldn't dispute that there are more stableford competitions but I'd argue stroke play is the standard game in Ireland for any 'big' competition.

Interesting view

Hard to know tbh, maybe somewhere in between. And depends on the demographics within your club.

For me, anything outside of the main club competition day Saturday is purely casual and social. Even the the hole summer Wednesday singles, which is counting, has a more social approach by the membership, in my club, and it's more about getting out to play golf on a school day and enjoying the craic after. Not as serious as Saturday, still counting for handicap though. And people are free to care or not care on how this affects your WHS. I've got to the point if not really caring.

The old system is gone unfortunately. The new one is in and I think it's all swings and roundabouts. It is what it is.

Id hate to have to put in a counting score for any casual rounds outside of a competition though. I'd think that would take the joy out of a game for me.

Its an interesting piece alright, but IMHO it goes completely against the culture of golf here in Ireland and presumably the UK too. If we were to go his route, there'd be no sneaky 6/9 holes after work on a quiet Thursday, maybe playing two balls or dropping a few balls around a green and doing some chipping etc. If, and I'm still not 100% clear, he's suggesting that our established way of playing and approaching golf should change just so we can be shoehorned into essentially the American system, I think that will never work. Its pure "cart before the horse" territory IMO. I think prior to WHS, we had long realised that competition scores are a totally different animal to general play ones. Anyone can rock up and shoot 23pts for 9 holes with their buddies on a Friday night, put a card and pencil in their pocket the next day and its a different matter.

The approach to golf in the states is very different from what I've seen the few times I've played over there. Its more of an almost rare or precious commodity and you make the most of it when you can get it. ie count your score. There doesn't seem to be the "club" side of things to the extent that there is here. Admittedly its a small sample size but that was just the vibe I got.

I get the logic of his point that someone with a lot more recent scores will probably have a more accurate index, but that could cut both ways depending on where your counting scores sit in your record. I mean I haven't touched a club in nearly 3 months for various reasons (injury, COVID, weather) and it could be another month or more before I do - will I be able to play to my index when I return ? I'd say highly unlikely for a month or so at least. I have several non counting rounds to drop off before any of my best 8 come into play, so my index won't increase for a while.

I like WHS, I possibly/probably prefer it to CONGU, but don't really care enough either way, the system is what it is. I genuinely think a lot of our issues with it are that we're so conditioned for decades to think of handicap as being how someone is capable of playing rather than how they are actually playing in their last 20 games.

We do see and do golf in a different manner on this side of the Atlantic.

I agree with posters here around our casual rounds be it on our own or buddies playing skins etc.

It (Whs) will evolve over the coming years as in a new culture will emerge around competitio.

Where? I haven't a clue.

You're right, we can still practice, but I think he mentioned something about having to declare that you're not counting the round, as opposed to now having to declare that you are counting it (or maybe it was in a different post above somewhere). Just seems a bit backwards tbh. Obviously its purely personal choice, but I don't want to have to log in to declare my 9 holes on a summer evening as non-counting or whatever phrase would be used. OK its not a major inconvenience, but then its not such a big jump to "........sure of course he's winning, he's up here every night playing and never puts in a card, he should be 3 shots lower if he put in his cards, he's clearly playing well..." Not that I'm ever in a position to be up every evening or anything close to it, but I'm lucky that most Fridays I can finish at 3pm and if I go for a few holes I don't want to feel like I should be counting a score or wondering should I fill out a card.

I agree with most of the rest of your post - yer man is clearly using his own situation to maybe unfairly skew his view. I think he's trying to superimpose the US system or mentality onto the GB&I situation and its very much a square peg into a round hole. As you say, for basically 6 months of the year most of us here can't get "proper" golf anyway. I'm not sure the winter slope idea would work, it seems like an awful lot of work in setting it up - I know in my club there would be several routings of holes that would be used depending on conditions, giving "courses" of anything from 9 to 15 holes. We'd even go from a tee box on our 12th hole to the green on the 14th in winter time.

Personally my own take on winter golf is that its so far removed from the real thing its almost irrelevant to their WHS index - I know that probably won't be popular. Forward tees & placing everywhere, for me, makes scoring just random and certainly masks bad driving.

I dunno, maybe it should be time limited rather than number of rounds, like best 8 of your last two months or best 40% of your last two months rounds or something rather than best 8 of last 20 which could go back months and months. I don't really think it'd work though.

Actually think this piece makes a bit of sense..... https://www.stewartgolf.co.uk/blogs/main/the-problem-with-handicaps

Just on the winter slopes thing. In theory it makes sense because of the varying conditions, but in practice would be impossible. I say that because getting a course rated at the moment, just on normal tees is an exercise in frustration. I've been waiting two years now to have a set of tees rated for women.

So less than a third beat their handicap even with being able to tee their ball up on the fairway on a shorter course.