2020 Tour Championship

[turtleback]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this form of competition doesn't even conform to the Rules of Golf, as there is no form under the Rules for a handicap competition where the handicap is determined in an arbitrary manner for arbitrary reasons.  There is a huge amount of regulatory material outside the 4 corners of the rules about what handicaps are and how they are determined and this process isn't included.  And in the one place where handicap competition is explicitly mentioned within the 4 corners of the rules it specifies that:

Quote

(2) Handicap Competitions. In a handicap competition:

• The player’s “net score” for a hole or the round is the gross score adjusted for the player’s handicap strokes.

• This is done so that players of differing abilities can compete in a fair way.

That doesn't fit this case, since this "handicap" is not done "so that players of differing abilities can compete in a fair way."  It is done for completely different reasons.  So I think it would be nice if the tour Championship was a competition that conformed to the ROG.

I know a change is unlikely but somehow that has no effect on my disdain for this abomination of a process.  Nor on my railing about it every year when it comes up.

[iacas]

16 minutes ago, turtleback said:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this form of competition doesn't even conform to the Rules of Golf, as there is no form under the Rules for a handicap competition where the handicap is determined in an arbitrary manner for arbitrary reasons.

Yes it does. It's stroke play. It's not literally a "handicap" in the sense that golf uses the word.

16 minutes ago, turtleback said:

So I think it would be nice if the tour Championship was a competition that conformed to the ROG.

I appreciate the attempted creativity here, but it conforms. It's four rounds of stroke play. Players simply start at a different starting point.

And if you want to think of it as a traditional handicapping, then everyone's handicap resets to 0 after the first round. And I disagree that these are not players "of differing abilities" — that's what the FedExCup standings show you - what players are of differing abilities and where they rank.

[Wally Fairway]

what an odd debate, then again there is a thread here with hundreds of post about the GOAT