Net Stroke Play Results Analysis and Sandbagging

I don't pretend to understand what, exactly a given handicap index represents, but I remember being under the impression that it should represent what a person is theoretically capable of shooting on a good day.  Maybe not a career day, but a good day.

In that light, I've started wondering about the results of the past 4 tournament events in my club.  I will post the results here, and ask for any handicap gurus to let me know if this jumps out at you as a sandbagging problem:

Tournament 4 (48 players) :

First Flight:

1. 66

2. 70

3. 70

4. 70

Second Flight:

1. 66

2. 67

3. 68

4. 69

Third Flight:

1. 68

2. 73

3. 75

4. 75

Tournament 3 (20 players) :

First Flight:

1. 65

2. 67

3. 67

Second Flight:

1. 67

2. 74

3. 74

Tournament 2 (56 players) :

First Flight:

1. 69

2. 70

3. 72

Second Flight

1. 67

2. 67

3. 69

Third Flight

1. 71

2. 73

3. 74

Fourth Flight:

1. 69

2. 72

3. 77

Tournament 1 (47 players) :

First Flight:

1. 63

2. 64

3. 66

4. 66

Second Flight:

1. 66

2. 69

3. 69

4. 69

Third Flight:

1. 68

2. 71

3. 73

4. 73

So I was going to use fictitious names to reflect repeat winners, but this isn't really so much about specific sandbaggers, but in general what % of people should shoot lower than their handicap in a tournament? Do these results seem normal?

Brandon

First of all, I'm not a handicap guru.  But, I don't see anything here out of the ordinary.  I would suspect that the winners of most tournaments would shoot a few under net.

Trying to think about it mathematically, if the handicap is made up of the average of the 10 best of your last 20 and it's bumped down by 4%, I'm going to say that the percentage of people who shoot below their handicaps on a given day should be somewhere around 23%.

But you would think the percentage would be lower in a tournament. Pressure, etc.

Theoretically, the average net score in a handicapped tournament, should be 72 (or even par).  The whole point of handicapping, is that it levels the playing field, and allows whoever is playing better, relative to their "average" day to win.  That may be the 18 capper who shoots a 86, or it could be the 2 capper who shoots a 70.

Most of your tournaments fall into that, it looks like some guys are shooting above par and some below par.  Nothing too out of the ordinary IMO.

You could flip that though, and say that you take it more seriously.  I know that when I'm playing a casual round with buddies while enjoying a few beers, I'm not going to spend as much time reading my putts, and I won't concentrate as much as I do during a tournament.  I haven't played in enough individual tourneys lately to quantify this, but I would bet that I would actually shoot better in a tourney than in a weekend round with a couple friends with nothing on the line.

I thought that the handicap was indexed by the lowest recent 10 scores. So I would say the percentage of me shooting my handicap is 10% or 1 in every 10 rounds.

Now shooting below my handicap, I would say more like 5%. And in a tournement, pressure even lower.

That would be true if your handicap was made up of the average of all of your scores.  But since its only made up of the average of the best 50% of your scores, then you're basically only beating your handicap roughly 25% of the time.  So the average net score in a handicap tournament should be above par since 75% of the players shouldn't be shooting their handicaps.

But we agree that Brandons numbers above don't look too abnormal.

From http://www.popeofslope.com/guidelines/howwell.html:

I.e., given a large enough sample size, about 25% of participants in a tournament should score net par or better.

In the respective tournaments you posted results for, the numbers are roughly 19%, 20%, 16%, and 21%.  So that seems reasonable to me.

In that case, can I withdraw my statement about not being a handicap guru?  Apparently I am, I just didn't know it yet.

Golfingdad = Official Handicap Guru

He's got my vote.

Thanks for the responses/discussions.  Informative stuff.  From the link:

The first two require a season-long analysis of individual results, but the last bit tells me that anything better than net 68-69 is an anomaly, or at least unusual.

Tournament 1 was a statistical anomaly as there were 5 net 66s or better (even a net 63!).  The weirdest thing about that is that the net 63 and net 64 came from two of the lowest handicaps in the club.  They shot gross 73 and 74 respectively.

Brandon