Poll: Is this guy a sandbagger?

I am a bit reluctant to post this (because this is an actual member of our men's club and you never know who reads internet forums anonymously), but some of the differentials were striking to me. Here are the last 20 rounds, which I have sorted between Tournament and "other"

Tournament differentials

- 3.6, 4.8, 6.5, 2.4, 3.8, (-1.8), 6.2, (-3.0). Average = 2.8

"Other" differentials

- 4.1, 7.5, 8.4, 8.8, 7.5, 8.8, 8.6, 4.8, 6.9, 7.3, 9.2, 8.8. Average = 7.6

It would be nice to know his absolute handicap range, but from the data given if he is a 6-12 handicap range I would say yes. If he is a 15 or higher handicap it's very possible that he is not sand bagging.

I'm about a 15 and have a differential average of 4 to 5 strokes.

EDIT: Should have a category for "IDK what the differential is relative to HI". I would like to change my vote to yes, he is sand bagging.

What is the time frame for his last 20?

The two sub-par rounds in tournaments raise a red flag, but I can't tell for sure.

Possible influences:

• Plays non-tournament rounds with business clients, and may not be fully focused on golf.
• He practices more at tournament time, and has his game in better shape. (This assumes the tournament rounds are bunched together, and not scattered here and there. It would be useful to see the various rounds in the sequence in which they occurred, maybe with tournament rounds highlighted in red).

I'm the other way, often a couple of strokes higher in T-rounds than in regular rounds (I just need to relax!)

His index hovers in the mid-low 3 range over the past 6 months. Hasn't changed by more than 1 stroke during that time. The last 20 rounds date back to March.

If I had to vote now, I'd vote "inconclusive" but I think you can share a little bit more and then it won't be inconclusive.  One question:

1. What is the dispersion (time frame) of tournaments vs. non?

I could easily order those differentials in a way that would make it clear that it's not a sandbagger ... but rather just a guy who's improving rapidly (or getting bad rapidly).  But if they are, like I suspect, sort of random, then I'd have a really hard time believing that a guy who's capable of playing to a +3 AND a +2 in a tournament could also REPEATEDLY shoot low to mid 80's when it doesn't count.

I mean, there are only 2 of the 12 casual scores that better than the WORST tournament score.  So, unless he has played all of the tournaments as his last 8 rounds, or something close to that, then I'm going to lean towards sandbagger.

Wait, scratch all of that ... he can't be a sandbagger, really, because all of those scores are posted.  Durrr. If he played 15 casual rounds vs. 5 tournament rounds, then, yeah, those bad casual rounds are really going to weigh down his handicap, but with 8 tournaments in there, then only 2 of the others are likely going to count.

EDIT: (And because of that, I went ahead and voted no.)

He only plays 20 rounds in 6 months? He's pretty good, or. . .only posts his bad casual rounds.

@Lihu , my 20th oldest (well, actually 21st at this point) is from March 8th.  Additionally, my handicap on February 15th was 8.9, and on Monday it's going to be 5.4.

You don't need to play every day to get good. (Oh, and I post every round. ;))

Drew, your wish is my command. These are the rounds dated from oldest to most recent (the opposite of how they would appear on the website).

3.6 (T)

4.8 (T)

6.5 (T)

4.1 (O)

2.4 (T)

3.8 (T)

7.5 (O)

8.4 (O)

8.8 (O)

7.5 (O)

8.8 (O)

8.6 (O)

4.8 (O)

(-1.8) (T)

6.2 (T)

6.9 (O)

7.3 (O)

9.2 (O)

8.8 (O)

(-3.0) (T)

Also, my apologies, the 20 rounds have actually been over an 18 month span. I read it as March of 2014, but it is actually March of 2013

So his tournament average is less than stroke below his handicap? I'd say no based on that. And isn't there a threshold based on that difference where GHIN will flag it for the committee to adjust? I'm guessing it's not in that threshold, so not a sandbagger.

Even if he is a sandbagger, he's not very good at it.

So is it your contention that you cannot be a sandbagger if a good percentage of your posted rounds are tournaments? What about the guy who shoots a 69, but doesn't post it in a casual setting because it was a "practice round"? Or the guy who is on pace to shoot even par but conveniently loses concentration and doubles the last 3 holes to card and post a 78 instead? What would you call this fellow if not a sandbagger?

(* Note, I am not stating that either of these things apply to this particular golfer - rather I'm questioning the notion that you cannot be a sandbagger if your index is mostly comprised of T scores).

I vote yes.

Looking at it this way, it looks pretty bad.  The majority of the good tournament rounds were all a long time ago, which is fine - goes to my one option that he's gotten worse - except for those two tournaments where he shot under par.  Those stick out like massive sore thumbs.

It's hard to imagine that somebody could do that.  If you ignore the fact that the "last 20" rule is completely arbitrary and were to just take the last 14, then you have a problem.  His tournament average is 0.5, and his non-tournament average is 7.8.

Somethings fishy there.

I see this a lot looking when I look at handicap history from some of the guys in our club that don't play often. Just looks like he's getting better to me. Maybe due to more practice than playing.

Yeah, I overstated a bit, because I was backtracking from having overstated too much the other way.  His handicap on those 20 scores is a 3.0.  If you were to give him a handicap on just the tournament scores (and in doing so, I'm taking the best 4 out of those 8) it would be a 0.2.  That's a big discrepancy (but not as big as 7.6 to 2.8)

So, yeah, if he is actually capable of playing all the time like he does in the tournaments, but for whatever reason keeps posting middling 82's or whatever, then he can absolutely be a sandbagger.

I'm not sure how a person can shoot that badly in casual rounds and shoot scratch just during tournaments. The other thing is the long string of bad casual rounds (of course if they were my scores, they would be great).

Every scratch player I know spends equal time practicing and playing. They report scores consistent to their handicap, when asked. The differential scores never seem to vary by more than a few strokes even on a new course. Of course, I only know 5 scratch players locally (range from +4 to +1), so this is probably not a general case. I suppose when I join a large club, I'll get to meet a lot more people in this handicap range. Maybe, there are many outliers who shoot this way?

Really depends on where the tournaments are played. Are his scores all from the same course?

No, there is very little commonality to the courses. 7 of the 8 tourneys have been played from different courses. Even though he is a member of our men's club, he has only posted two rounds here. Those two were from our two day tournament in May, which was one of our larger payout tournaments (which he won). He did not participate in the June, July our August tournaments. He is now signed up to play in the September event, which is the other "big money" two day event.