Competion Conditions Reduce handicaps

Purely IMHO,

The club could put whatever local restrictions in place they want to afaik. Like, say, the Father & Son in Castle where there's a max of I think its 18 (open to correction on the number but there's definitely a limit), or a 3 club competition or whatever.

However, again, purely IMHO, the game is not in danger of being destroyed by bandits/cheats. Is there an issue ? Possibly/arguably. Are there a few bad eggs ? Of course there are. They'll be there no matter what system is in place. For all this talk of people winning multiple club majors, in any club I've played in I don't ever remember seeing many repeat names on the winner's boards that you often see in clubhouses. Club championships will have more as there's always a much smaller pool of potential winners.

Respectfully, I don't think your proposal makes any sense tbh. To me it looks like winning is to be punished somehow. You can't realistically say to someone, that effectively you played well one day 4 years ago, so you've to be "handicapped" (forgive the pun !) now just in case you were to do it again. Madness. If a club has 4 majors in a season, imagine how the next winner would be looked at, when 16 people are not allowed to compete off their full handicap which is generated based on how they are actually playing at that point in time. Every winner would have an asterix after their name. What would you do if somebody, say an improver, happened to win a second major ? Does he lose 6 shots for the next major ?

I think there must be a better way to solve any problem with WHS in Ireland, if there is one. Bandits are gonna bandit regardless. I don't honestly think there are that many of them though. Certain interclub competitions notwithstanding 😀

Why doesn't it?

Myself and I'm sure a lot of other people play a lot more casual golf than competitions. Submitting casual rounds gives me an accurate representation of my handicap. If I was to only submit competition cards this year then I'd be playing off a handicap 10 shots higher.

From what I've seen, the level of banditry is nowhere near as bad as it's been made out on online forums like this one.

As usual, it would be a tiny percent of the population who ruin it for everyone else

Handicaps should represent a person's ability, not their motivations and I think it's questionable when a high handicapper, who rarely practices, arrives early before a major club event to practice -especially if it's out of character. Don't get me wrong, it's okay to have a casual approach to golf, but it suggests a lack of sincerity where those who casually approach every game, relying on extra shots per hole perhaps relying on only finding their groove midway or adjusting to green speeds after the first few green, change their tack for the bigger competitions and gain an advantage where they turn up early to do that work that they normally couldn't be bothered with.

Further then this, lads who go to bed early before a round because it's the captains prize, or practice more or approach differently, or don't have an extra pint the night before are still taking additional steps to peak for bigger comps, which is banditry.

😂 this forum is mental

Jaysus thats mental

I play off 11 sometimes i fall out of the car on to tee one. Sometimes ill hit a couple of putts. Sometimes ill have loads of time to chip and putt before a round.

Cant say a warm up beforehand would make a huge difference to my score to be honest. And i always aim to break 80 no matter what

I'd say you're okay if you just put basic ingredients into the sandwich like lettuce. Rashers or tomato probably okay too 😲

Joking aside, my point (obviously) is that banditry is a grey area and people who accuse others of being bandits are generally bandits themselves (passive).

The handicap system means that if you don't prepare differently for a major to a regular handicap counting event you simply can't win it. This means each and every golfer has to make a choice of choosing a) to not care about winning a major in their lives or b) to care so much about winning a major that you choose to play half-arsedly for the rest of the year. WHS in particular has strengthened the notion that it's actually stupid for people to practice their games during the year outside of majors - if they care to win competitions.

But this is blatantly NOT true

Remember you can be fact checked

In your club, the last four stroke play comps.

August Medal - won by someone in Division 2 off 12

Presidents - won by Division 2 off 14

July Medal - won by Division 2 off 13

Captains - won by Division 2 off 14

You might want look harder in the mirror as to why you cant win one!!!

April playing off nine

Lad off 3 and another off 30 both shot lower than actual winner so must have not met criteria in some way

All results in between dominated by higher handicaps

It's not bat **** crazy though. You're making a general point an individual one.

No one particular high handicapper (this is not only limited to high handicappers however) can decide to practice and win whichever major he wants.

If a certain percentage don't prepare and practice to play their best throughout the year, however, for certain majors they change their approach to practice and prepare for a given major, the likelihood is that one of this cohort will win as their WHS handicap is not as accurate as someone who prepares and practices appropriately for all their golf.

Now I say this as someone who doesn't always have the time to prepare and practice the same way throughout the year, therefore my WHS is not as accurate as it could be. This has not resulted in me winning a club major (not my turn yet), although I have won some society majors for the reasons outlined by the OP.

I am not dishonest in how I play in any particular round (always try my best on the day). I have some short-game deficiencies that can hold me back, that practice can sometimes (not always) ameliorate.

While I agree with the premise of the OP, it's not really something that can be addressed. We're not professionals, it's a game, you can't tell people they have to prepare the same always. Natural enthusiasm for anything waxes and wanes. If someone gets a surge of the interest because they'd like to play well in the Captain's, what can you do about it?

A person who never practices a thing and is comfortable playing off 25 who then suddenly puts in a spur of practice to get their groove in the run up to a major.. IS a thing that happens. I personally played against an opponent who turned with 24 points (just counting his ball alone) in a fourball match final. This is a level that no person who practices their game regularly can hope to achieve. This persons very high handicap (in my opinion) is based on them not practicing throughout the year. If they suddenly put in a few days of practice they can transform their game and make themselves literally unbeatable. I have no doubt that there was an almost 50point score on their ball alone in the pipeline had we finished the 18 holes out. In my opinion this person was sandbagging, and had the ability to switch on their game for the big day.

Agree with a lot of this but I wouldn't be so sure that one of the practicers will win though. Plenty of people every weekend of the year step from their car to the 1st tee and shoot a good score, and they'll have no answer as to how it happened. They'll do the same thing the next day or week and shoot a million. Such is golf. I've seen as many people practice like mad the week of the Captains and shoot terrible scores as I have shoot 42pts not having played since the previous weekend. I don't think our handicaps will ever be completely "accurate" though, or what does accurate even mean ? Its probably fair to say most of us play better later in the season when we've plenty of golf under the belt than when it first kicks off in April but our HC should reflect that, albeit with a bit of a lag I think.

I get your point but I'm not sure its such a linear relationship between practice and performance at the higher handicap levels. I don't believe for a second that there's a club golfer out there that can play well on demand or turn it on on the big day. Particularly with the pressure of "the big day", similar to a Sunday for the pros. The best players in the world regularly follow a 65 with a 74, or vice versa, look at Aberg last week, IMHO there's no way an 18 handicapper can just decide to shoot 10 over par. I mean unless they're absolutely and completely taking the p1ss to the point of carrying maybe 10 shots or something crazy, which I'd say is unlikely. Even a guy who regularly shoots 95-100, all it takes really is for a couple of putts to drop on a given day and he'll have 40 pts, he probably won't have played any different to his normal.

But if we had the 1 shot cap from CONGU, doesn't that pretty much abandon WHS ? Like, you can't really have WHS if you have a 1 shot cap.

I think part of the issue is that so many of us have been conditioned over years/decades to thinking of handicap as one thing, but under WHS its a totally different metric altogether. So different that they arguably should have come up with a different name for it tbh.

You can still have WHS but limit the amount a handicap can go up. Sure it’s in play, just that 3/5 is to much.

loads of options

hard Cap at 3, no soft cap.

soft cap1 or 2 & hard cap 3

3/5 above lowest in last 36 months rather than 12

or make average different. Use best 5 instead of 8. Use 30 or 40 instead of 20.

plenty more ideas to come up with solutions to a big problem that is not being addressed, while still keeping the bones of the WHS system

Why must we change it?

because it is not working

Fair enough. What does "working" look like though ? I don't think there's ever going to be a system that gets universal approval. I mean is your handicap meant to help you compete or stop you winning ? I know there's of course a balance to be found, I'm just curious as to what we expect from a handicapping system.

Sorry to hear that Gypsy. On the back of that I'll think I'll stop complaining about the weather now, or golf balls picking up mud 🤔

I think that’s a very good point. People having a bad round just don’t care and will go through the motions. Before it didn’t matter an awful lot as there was a proper cap on the handicaps. Now it matters, massively.

on the flip side. They only have to do their best in 8 of their last 20 rounds. But I do think that is actually quite a lot for amateurs, who at the end of the day are mostly made up of leisure golfers and not ones out to make their life revolve around it.

but when it comes to majors, I don’t see any problem with someone putting in some extra effort, basically everyone does it, some more so than others.

im sorry for not drinking for a month before Killarney and for only having 3 pints on the first night and for working on my fitness and for going to the range a few times 🤣😂

Roadrunner, tell me. Do you hold the same black and white views on every competitor in every sport?

e.g every time a premier league player has an off day, or an out half misses a kick he usually gets, or a snooker player’s timing is a fraction out, or a boxer takes one on the chin - do you view it as manipulation?

This is not a healthy take on life.

I disagree entirely Roadrunner.

Over one hundred years of evidence means we can accept that professional sportspeople - the most coordinated, most focused and most practiced of competitors - will have off days. Days when their hand-eye coordination is a little out. Days when their energy is low. Days when what they’ve been working on in practice just doesn’t work in competition. Days when due to all the associative aspects of being a human being means their mind is elsewhere.

——

Most competitive sport enjoys a qualification / pee qualification stage that involves a form of a league.

When a league competitor in any sport performs below expectations, the impact is not only felt in their direct match. The effect ripples across that league, albeit usually a small ripple.

——

Yet. Here we are, in a discussion whereby you describe the actions of golfers who do not subscribe to regular practice, as the actions of sporting cheats.

Even though these people will usually have commitments to work, family, travel, other sports and hobbies that pretty much rules out regular practice.

But no. According to you, they’re manipulating the game. They’re cheats.

i will repeat that this is not a healthy outlook on life.

——-

Two things I suggest you need to grapple

one is that club major competitions tend to happen in high summer, with longer evenings and occasionally better weather, and people taking holidays. In other words, they happen in the couple of months per year when the late evenings allow practice to become an option for busy people.

the other is basic mathematics. If (I will use round numbers) there’s 200 regular golfers in your club, and 25 rounds of weekend / counting competitions per annum, then you should win a club competition about every EIGHT years. Once you get your head around this basic computation, then it should be easy to understand why it’s so difficult for anyone of any handicap - not just you - to win a comp.

I don't think I've called anyone a cheat, have I? But as I've stated, the way I see it there's:

a) intentional out-and-out bandits (2-3%)

and

b) golfers who 100% play to their best ability all of the time.

but I also think there exists a middle category

c) a cohort of people who are unintentional handicap manipulators (in that they simply don't play to the best of their ability every time - given to work commitments, family, other sports, love life, whatever you got, life-gets-in-the-way-reasons)

Do you deny the existence of the C category completely? As in there's no spectrum and just goes directly from "complete and utter bandit" straight to "100% plays the best of their ability all the time"?

I’d deny your category C in the terms you’ve described it. It really depends on what you’d define as “best of their ability”. Like, if someone can’t make time to practice before a given round and can just make their tee time, that’s the best they can do on that day. Likewise another week they might have time to hit a few balls a couple of evenings, that’s the best they can do that week. They’re not imo manipulating the system, intentionally or otherwise, it’s designed to be fluid and your handicap is supposed to be far more moveable under WHS.

You sound exactly like me

Perhaps not, breaking routine can often bring negative results

What does 15% have to do with it? You're making a stupid point anyway