Personal Best Score Question

Suppose you had an early blow up and failed to finish a hole for pace of play reasons, but then went on to play great the other 17 holes.  Looking at your final score (using ESC or most likely score on the blow up), your total is better than you have ever shot (by 1, 2, 3, 4+ shots).  Would you consider this your personal best?  AKA, if someone asked you what your personal best was, would you mention this round?

Nope.  No asterisks on breaking barriers or landmarks.

ESC has no bearing on the score either.  It's only for the purpose of determining what to post for handicap.

This...

Agree.

Whoops.  Answered the survey before reading the post!  Was assuming there was gonna be a holier than thou element here, where if you didn't hole out a 2 inch tap in that hole wasn't completed and you're considering it a personal best with an unfinished hole.  In the scenario given, absolutely no way would I consider that for a personal best round.

I would mention it as a significant round, and a potentially good one, but it wouldn't qualify as a personal best for me.

I've been in that situation, more or less.  Stood on the 18th tee at one under par and hooked my tee shot near the OB line.  When I got to the ball I found that it was indeed out of bounds.  As well as I was playing that day, my most likely score would have been a double bogey had I just not finished the hole, but I went back to the tee, and was just flustered enough to take 5 on my second ball, resulting in a triple bogey 7 with the stroke and distance penalty.  I could have just taken the double, but it would never have felt right.  A 6 would have tied my personal best, a one over par 73, something I've never managed to do since I shot that round of 73 in August of 1989.

For me, a round can only be counted for records or bragging rights if it was shot 100% under the Rules of Golf.  That is one reason why I started playing every round that way back in 1988.  I wanted a consistent yardstick to measure progress and I wanted to be able to honestly say "Yes, I shot 78 today" with no asterisks.

I even have a hard time considering my actual personal bests as personal bests right now ... they already have asterisks on them, so definitely not.

Here's what I mean:  My biggest achilles heel is driving the ball.  It's uncommon for me to finish any round without at least one or two wild drives.  My best rounds (-1 overall, +2 and +3 recently) have all occured on courses that are all on one piece of property with parallel holes and minimal hazards or OB, allowing me to recover from the wrong fairway.  It's not "cheating" but it just doesn't quite feel the same as it will feel when I'm able to duplicate one of those scores on a "real" course.  (Or, at least, until I can actually keep the ball inside the tree line of each hole on one of those courses)

Whenever I tell somebody of these pest scores it goes something like "my best is a 70 on a par 71, however ... "

In conclusion:  I'm with fourputt.  I'll even feel a little guilty if I acheive a personal best that included a gimme one footer or something like that.

No.

ESC is for posting/handicap purposes.  Not for actual gross/net result.  If you pick up on a hole, you can still post under handicapping rules, but that's about all it's good for.

That's why I don't take gimmes.  I putt everything out.  Sometimes a bit hastily, but I still putt it out.  I also happen to be lucky in that 3 of my 4 personal bests came during official tournaments, so there are no asterisks.  In fact, thinking back on it, in my best ever round (76, +4), I took a double-bogey on a hole where I felt there was a possibility that I was not OB and was hoping to get a marshal to rule on it for me.  I considered playing out the hole with 2 balls and getting a ruling at the clubhouse, but instead I simply played out the provisional and treated the first ball as out of bounds.  Because it was a par 5, if my first ball was not out of bounds, I still could have reached the green in regulation easily.  Could have been a 2-3 shot swing, but I took the penalty without making a big deal out of it.  I still won the tournament and trophy.

Anyway, ignoring your typo, I don't get why you would be hard on yourself for a wild drive into another fairway on an easy course.  The course differential will take that into consideration I'm sure.  You're just nuts.

Is that like a Freudian slip or something? ;)

Not really hard on myself.  I'm ecstatic when I shoot those scores!!!  But the level of ecstasy will go way up if I do it while staying on the 'proper' part of the course for 18 holes, or, like you, I do it in a tournament.  That's fantastic!

I think the ability to recover is just as important as hitting the ball as on target as possible. My personal best wouldn't be flawed in my mind if I spent the entire day playing from an adjacent fairway. If anything that makes it tougher. The number as long as it's legit is all that matters to me. If that's the way I judge my bad scores it has to be that way for the good ones too. Something had to be done well to get there. If I came up short because of a mistake in some ways it's an even better story, what could have been had I not made the error. I like those reminders.

This. ESC is just for handicaps. For example, I might shoot 88 with one of the holes being a 10. As far as posting goes that hole gets adjusted to a 7 and I post an 85, but I still shot an 88.

So, to answer the OPs question, no I wouldn't. Let's continue with the above example. If on another day I shot an 86 and had no scores adjusted by ESC then I that would be the lower round. Yes the 88 turned into an 85, but which round did I actually shoot a lower score? The 86.

(Side note, those are just random scores I made up. My actual low is a 79.)

When I first read the poll I thought "What's the point of even asking the question? How could anyone think they had a personal best if they skipped a hole?"

Then it turns out that so far two people think otherwise. They don't appear to have posted though, so no telling what their (undoubtedly skewed ) thought process is...

It would be a (secret) personal best that I would draw upon for confidence and momentum but I would refrain from bragging about it. I broke 100 multiple times on short executive courses (par 64 and par 68) but never announced that I had broken 100 until I finally did it on a "real" course with a par 72.

That's fair - and actually the poll question does use the word "potential" PB, not "actual" PB.

True enough.  I have a tie for my 2nd best score(s).  One of the rounds I hit a much higher FIR/GIR, and thus I think higher of that day.  So I can understand where you're coming from in being more proud of a score in which you had a better control of your game, rather than just getting lucky and or draining some improbable chips/putts.  But then again, if it's good enough for the pros (posting a great score while still having some embarrassing shots), then it's good enough for us.

Until 6/23, when you shoot a 78.

My dad is one of those types.  He always picks up when he reaches ESC.  He has a vanity-cap (23-ish, but realistically should probably be 27 or 28) and rarely finishes a round without at least one "x."  I imagine that if he managed an 89 (I think that would be his best on a full par 72 course) even with an "x" or two, he would still consider it his best.

It's all relative though.  I mean, if he's always picking up a few times then it probably would be his best.  Of course, it wouldn't technically be an 89, but people who don't finish holes, fluff lies, and take borderline gimmes don't really care about technicalities now, do they?

My PB mentioned above came in the 3rd round (out of 4) in the 1989 club championship, so it holds a special place for me, even more than just being my best score ever.