Handicap is a handicap???

Do any of you notice that handicaps only benefit those with higher ones or am I just a sore looser?

My handicap is now +1.8 and my Club has a ton of handicapped tourneys. I basically have no chance to win. I could be more competetive if everyone else turned in all their true scores. Seems like everyone only turns in their bad rounds. I hate to say it but I may start sluffing on mine too.

Tell you what: I'll trade golf gripes with you. I'll take your "I'm a +1.8 and can't win handicapped events", and give you my "I'm a 26, and 50% of my shots go nowhere near where I was trying to make them go, and the other 50% aren't all that spectacular either".

-Andrew

The problem isn't with the handicap per se but with the level of consistency exhibited by the golfer. As a general rule the better at the game you become the lower your handicap goes and the more consistent you become. The better player is going to play right around their handicap, whereas the high handicapper is posting scores all over the place. Due to this inconsistency the high handicapper is just as likely to shoot a number that is way below his rating as he is posting one way above it. It's a lot easier to see a ten stroke shift when you're getting 20 or more strokes compared to the guy who doesn't get any strokes at all.

Very well explained.

Not sure about a study against USGA handicaps, but the following study from Scotland showed with some good evidence that this is simply a misconception and that the chance of success is quite equal.

e.g. "Category 1 and Category 3 players typically comprise 8% and 40% of a club competition and in a 'single class' competition win 10% and 38% of the time." - http://www.congu.com/template1.asp?pid=168 I guess what I'm trying to say is, you have in theory almost the same identical statistical odds of winning as any other individual, regardless of handicaps (providing they are not sandbaggers of course!). There is also this interesting article fromt he same study, which suggests that you are slightly better off being a more consistent lower handicap player... take a read: http://www.congu.com/template1.asp?pid=174

Very well put. Isn't that the purpose of different flights within an event? To match up players of equal tendencies?

statistics show that you should win...even on a bad day

but i hear you man
all my clubs events have index allowances too and i hate it
we do have one +2.5 at our club that wins everything...all the time

so really me and one other guy are the ones to beat.....and i get beat all the time (with allowances)

im switching clubs next year tho, hopefully there will be more flighted tournaments

As other have pointed out, the handicap system was designed so that better players will tend to win more over the long term when competing against those with higher handicaps, and flighted tournaments help take out some of the short term swings. The math bears this out.

But it sounds like your gripes have nothing to do with the handicap system or the inconsistency of other players - it has to do with the integrity of those you're playing against in your club. If you feel you're playing in a club of sandbaggers, perhaps it's time to find a different club???

As other have said, Chief Broom is right. The difference (and I might add a very BIG difference) is consistency between a low handicapper vs. a high handicapper. If a tournament is not flighted, which I can't understand why, the lower handicapper has a much lower chance of winning where there are a lot of handicappers in the field. For example, let's say you have a tournament where there are 3 low HC players and 20 high HC players. Chances are, those low HC players (due to their consistency) will shoot right around their HC maybe a few strokes better, at best. Now you have 20 high HC players and because of their inconsistency the odds of one of those guys shooting lights out in a given day is much higher. So it is likely that in a net score tournament, one of those high HC players will win.

If you go head to head (i.e., one on one) the odds of high HC winning may be about equal (at least that is what HC system is suppose to do). But where there are a lot of high HC players in a net score tournament, the odds are one of the high HC player will win.

I don't believe this to be true. In fact the way handicaps are calculated just the opposite is true and several others have stated very well why that is the case if handicaps are honest. However there are sandbaggers and that is why I don't play in member-guest tournaments anymore. There always seems to be someone (a guest) with about a 16 handicap that fires a couple of high seventies low eighties (gross) rounds. Never seems to fail. So I know how you feel this way.

I think that for a high vs low handicap in a one-on-one match there should be no real advantage for either party. But when it's, say 10 low vs 10 high, the issue changes. It's far more likely that one of the 20 high handicaps are going to score 5 strokes under their handicap than that one of the low handicaps is. In one-on-one the high handicapper has a lot of ability to swing either way from his score, and he is probably more likely to swing much lower than much higher, so the statistical advantage for either one of them is minimal at best, but when you lump a lot of high handicappers together all you need is one of them to score really low. (We're only talking about winning it all, here, not average final rank.)

My guess is that in a 100 low vs 100 high match, the top, say, 10 spots would be most heavily populated by high handicaps who got lucky and shot 5 or so under their handicap, but on the flip side the bottom 20 would probably be all high handicappers.

Again, one-on-one I think it's pretty well accepted that neither the high nor low handicapper has an advantage, but in mass tournaments I think that it changes.

If the tournament was elimination-based with one-on-one matches, I think that a low handicapper would be more likely to win because he's less likely to bomb one of his matches.

[edit]
Yeah, basically what Yukari said.

I cannot understand Your problem. With Your handicap You should not bother about hcp competitions but exclusively play on national tours or other scratch competitions.

Besides in all hcp competitions I have encountered the best scr score always gets rewarded, actually many times better than the hcp winner. So my suggestion is: choose competitions where You may win or at least play with Your own kind.

55% weighted in favour of the lower handicap player I reckon if this link is anything to go by:

http://www.congu.com/template1.asp?pid=174 Not much of an advantage but it's something

This is the effect that causes the perception that high-HC players always win. If 90% of the players are high-handicappers, then a high-handcapper will win 90% of the time even if the handicapping is perfect and everyone has an exactly equal chance to win.

Think about it this way, if you were in a tournament against 30 players who were all exactly as good as you are, how often would you expect to win? About one in 30, aka 3%, or not very often. If handicapping does its job, then you can expect to win no more often than that. If you're playing in a tournament every week in a typical golf season and the handicapping is fair, you should win once a year or so, depending on number of players, etc. Given the feeling that, as a better golfer, you should be winning, I can see how this would be frustrating, but that's the nature of handicapped tournaments. There probably are imbalances, but without some real numbers about who is winning out of what number of tournaments, I think it's very easy for perceptions to be skewed.

If they don't turn in scores there sandbagging. It isn't the system, its the players. I play with a really good player (right around a scratch) and he seems to shot around par. Me on the other hand always seem to be around 81. My index isn't current right now but when it is (next year) I'll turn in every score and feel confident I could figure out the course handicap, play at 100% and have a very fair game.

If I played like that personally I'd never play in a handicap event. Around here all the good ones are scratch events.

Stick to the flighted events...

I'm in a league that plays a standard stableford format. They maintain handicaps for all players (however many points you have to pull) and those handicaps are adjusted up or down everytime you play. Overall I'd say this format is very fair, but over the years better golfers tend to leave the league because their ability to win on any given day is pretty tough. Overall in this format it is the inconsistent golfers who wind up in the money the most. The better golfers can and do win, but if your play is consistent you have a hard time pulling more than your required number of points. But the inconsistent golfer will play well occasionally, and finish in the money, and then play horribly for a while, thereby causing the number of points they have to pull to drop dramatically. Eventually though that golfer will bust out a good round and because their points are so low will be plus 5, 10, or more for their round. But the steady consistent golfer who is always right around his points will never be able to go that much over. Add to this that the number of good golfers is relatively small compared to the average golfer who's handicap is high and you can bet that a few of the guys in the money will always be those high cappers. In the league setting I see this as adding to the enjoyment, but that also does explain where you'll see leagues that institute handicap requirements in order to be able to play. In the end it all works out and I'd say that someone who feels they are being taken advantage of should seek out a league (or tournament) that better fits with their style game.

That would be true if your handicap was based on the true average deviation from course rating, modified for slope. But it isn't, it is the best 10 rounds of the last 20. So it isn't a true average of your performance, and the USGA will also say that. It is an evaluation of your POTENTIAL scoring ability. So eliminating the worst rounds of a high handicap player Vs a low handicap player likely will make if more difficult to play to that handicap for the high handicap player. Stated differently the high handicap player's bad 10 include some that have a lot bigger deviation from the the course rating than the low handicap player so elimination of these has a larger influence on handicap and lower his handicap from his true average score more. So I think that one on one metal play the low handicap player beats the high handicap player 3 times out of 4.