"WHS Has Ruined Golf for Low Handicappers" - Two Articles

[iacas]

Why The World Handicap System Has Ruined Golf For Low Handicappers | Golf Monthly

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Single figure golfer Carly Frost says the World Handicap System has caused a sensational and unpopular shake-up of handicaps

The woman is based in the UK and thus this is a CONGU-based talk, but… it serves as good for discussion.

Here's a bit of a counter to that article:

Data Reveals World Handicap System Is Levelling Playing Field | Golf Monthly

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Golf Monthly has obtained data from HowDidiDo that shows the World Handicap System is working effectively to make competition fairer.

Thoughts?

[DeadMan]

I want to think about this more, as I have thoughts. My initial read of all this is that it seems more like CONGU favored low handicap players too much. I do have some sympathy for the low handicap players playing in net events, though. If it's not flighted, it's really hard to win a big net event as a low handicap.

More thoughts to come later.

[Ty_Webb]

I read the first article yesterday. I found it to be extremely whiny. The new system for higher handicappers will react much more quickly to a worsening, which is probably why she's talking about higher handicappers getting higher, but they also should be higher. 

One of her whines is that she was 1 under her handicap when she lost on 17. It's like, er, okay so your opponent had a good day. She sounds like she thinks she's entitled to win a few matches. She isn't. If she's bothered about giving shots then she should enter scratch events. 

I do have a little sympathy for her predicament about entering events. It's definitely easier to game the system and make your handicap lower than it should be. They base entry to events on handicap, so vanity caps definitely do take places from potentially more deserving people who are honest about their handicap. Where I am, for the most part events are either first come first served or there are qualifiers, which are themselves first come first served. If you pay attention to when times get released then you'll never have trouble getting into them. In the UK, they don't often do that. Even an event like the Amateur Championship at least last time I heard was straight done on handicap. Not qualifying. It's probably actually done now on WAGR at least to some extent, which is fine, but still would be better to have qualifying for non-WAGR related exemptions. 

[iacas]

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Back then, things simply seemed fairer.

Translation: "I won more often."

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I’m a low single figure handicapper who plays in two qualifiers a week, pretty much all year-round, course conditions and weather permitting. I’ve been in the prizes once this year - on the only day of the year the lowest two gross scores counted - our club championships. Yet look at the consistency of my week-in, week-out scores and a few years ago I would have won many more prizes.

Got one word for you, Carly: flights.

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My handicap has remained at 2, exactly where I started the year. On many occasions I scored 35 or 36 points in a stableford, that’s shooting just two-over-par, and was outside the top 10 and way off the prizes. A winning score has become virtually unachievable for me off my low handicap, up against women who have 20 or 30 shots more, but are perfectly capable of playing 10 under that handicap on their day and scoring 45 points or more.

I'll say it again: flights.

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I tee up against these women in county matches and I think, “How did they get as low as that?” It’s actually very easy. Just go and play a short course, put in an extra day card and shoot in the sixties a few times and hey presto! But where’s the pleasure in that?

She does not understand the WHS very well. I'm going to link to a thread here in a little bit (after I create it — I'll post it at the bottom of this post) that shows how off base she is here.

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On the flip side of the coin, it’s exciting to think that I could, in a matter of only a few good rounds (8 out of the last 20 in fact), now find myself playing off the lowest handicap of my life.

Which… must be your potential or your realized scoring ability, since you actually shot those scores.

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A run of poor golf will see your handicap index rocket very easily and quickly with the way the new WHS is designed.

Not really, no. Plus there's a soft cap and a hard cap. But, your handicap can only really go up if your 8 counting scores are pretty old.

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Such is the quantity of players now sitting in our club bronze team we can barely field a team for scratch matches anymore, and we have over 100 active women playing golf at my home club Parkstone in Dorset.

FLIGHTS.

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So I’ve stopped entering away days as too many women have realised that it pays to play off a higher handicap. They are playing the system by only putting in cards as and when they choose. That’s not how it was designed. You are supposed to put your scorecard in every time you play in order to get a true reflection of your ability.

Correct. They're cheating. That's not a problem with the WHS. That's a problem with cheaters.

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I signed up to our summer club knock-out this year because I love match play, hoping to get through at least a few rounds. I got knocked out in the first stage by a woman who used to play off 17 and now has 25 shots. I had to give her 22 shots and was one-over-par gross when I lost on the 17th. I had played immaculate golf.

So did she… for her level of play. And it's not like you lost 8&6. It went almost as far as it can go.

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I suggested that we could introduce a new Gold division for players off a handicap of 12 or better, so that we are competing against our low handicap peers.

Flights!

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In the meantime, the handful of low handicappers like me who feel that competitions are no longer fair, are starting to consider why they belong to a club. If things carry on like this we will lose the members we want the most, the younger players whose handicaps are coming down. This to me is a sad situation and one that certainly needs addressing.

Here's the thing… I listened to a podcast with Padraig Harrington and he said he thinks 90%+ of golfers just want to hit the ball well and make a few putts, and don't really care about winning things. If they could hit the ball well and never win anything again, most golfers by far would be okay with that. I tend to agree. Maybe not 90%, but the majority.

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Women who have been around the game for 20+ years are questioning why we can’t just go back to the way things were? The old CONGU handicap system worked well.

Translation: "I won more."

Carly, change is hard. Also… flights.

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Here's the other topic I was mentioning earlier:

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But, seriously Carly… flights. Higher handicappers are more likely to shoot 5 below their index than a 2 handicap is.

Also, I think she's agitated by the change. I don't think the handicaps are "less accurate" now — I bet most of those 17s that are now 21s rarely shot net par before, and now they are maybe 4 times out of 20. Like she does.

Also, I think the addition of slope to the ratings system is causing much of the change she doesn't like. Before, tees just had a standard scratch score — it didn't adjust based on how a bogey golfer played it relative to a scratch golfer.

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And, finally…

That chart from the second article shows that Carly is just flat out wrong — that higher handicappers were being unfairly punished before.

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Data collated and provided to Golf Monthly by HowDidiDo – Europe’s largest network of golfers – confirms that WHS is achieving that goal. The average Stableford points score in competition has gone from dramatically favouring those in the lower categories pre WHS to being almost equal (if anything favouring the mid to high handicappers.)

Players went from a 13-point difference to about a 2-point difference.

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Golf Monthly has been aware of anecdotal evidence and has received correspondence from lower handicap golfers who are concerned that the new system hurts their chances of winning in club handicap events. We wanted to try to prove or disprove if this is the case so went to HowDidiDo for some more hard data.

In other words… Carly, talk with your club about flights.

[bkuehn1952]

For much of the article she rails against higher handicappers. Then mid-article she bemoans how many good female players there are now and how the WHS made it too easy to improve one’s handicap. As a 2 she can’t get in the elite events.

Also, in the good old days (when she won), everyone maintained an honest handicap, aside from a few bandits. Today, cheating is rampant. She has an unhealthy paranoia about everyone cheating. If she is not careful, she is not only going to lose tournaments but also any friends.

[pganapathy]

The WHS is actually a better system provided the courses are ranked correctly.  I have a major issue with our course ranking leading to me having a very low handicap, but it is actually a very difficult course to score on.  The low rating is because it is short

[DeadMan]

I've had more time to think and digest this. It seems like that CONGU favored low handicappers, while WHS favors high handicappers, in net events. I'm guessing if you ask high handicappers in the UK, they will be very happy with WHS.

That said, it is a known issue* with WHS that high handicappers are much more likely to shoot way under their handicap. Individually, a low handicapper will normally beat a high handicapper in a net event. But when you add more players, the odds tilt in favor of a high handicapper having a low round. As an example, I'm about a 5 handicap. My lowest differential this year was a 2.6, and I think I was 4 under net. But, the majority of my rounds had a differential between 4 and 8. This means I am more likely to shoot near my handicap, but less I'm less likely to shoot way under my handicap, in comparison to higher handicappers. Which makes sense, because going from 78 to 72 is a lot harder than going from 95 to 89. Because of that, I rarely enter events where I'm going to be competing against a lot of high handicaps. I'm not likely to win those events.

The way to fix this is flighting. Flighted events fix this. That's what my men's club does - and I think it makes the net a lot more fair to low handicappers. And our low handicap division is usually won with someone shooting around 3 strokes under their handicap. It's great. Makes me feel like I have a chance to win without shooting a ridiculous round.

There are a lot of low handicappers that always complain about this stuff. I find it tiring. Yes, it's hard to win an event with a bunch of 20 handicaps. Play in a different event. Heck, I play in scratch events where I have no chance of winning because I enjoy playing in stuff like that. I really don't get the complaints there.

All that said, the WHS works really well for small competitions. I have no problem playing match play against a 20 under WHS. Or a fourball match against anybody. As much as some low handicaps complain about that, the stats show that they actually have an advantage in those situations. It just bothers some people that a 20 can beat a 3, but that's the whole point of the WHS.

Coming back around to this article, it really strikes me as a lot of whining here. She's complaining about cheaters, which can be dealt with pretty easily. She's complaining about not winning, which can be dealt with with flighting. It's really just whining about change that happened to make it harder for her to win, but fairer for everybody else. It does sound like she might need to find a club with better players or (gasp!) play with the men.

*Issue might not be the right word. Quirk? I don't know. I don't really think it's really a problem.

Edited November 17, 2023 by DeadMan

[StuM]

Can't add much that was not already stated above, but I'll try. 

Article #1 was just whining that she won more in the past. Maybe she was getting an unfair advantage under the old system that has not now been remedied.

I know others have the stats but it should not hard to understand a High HCP player has a better chance of shooting an occasional score significantly below their average than a Low HCP.  The winner of a handicapped round is the player that shoots the best round relative to THEIR norm, not relative to their opponents gross score.  Nobody should expect to win most/all of the time.  If you are competing against 10-20 other players there is a good chance one of them will shoot the occasional lower than normal round and to think that you should be that person a majority of the time is naïve.  Sure, you could get really hot for a short spell and win a few in short order but eventually your HCP will drop and make it hard to continue that.  The only way to continue winning is to consistently shoot lower & lower scores which simply becomes harder and harder to do.  In theory, the best you could ever do is 18 consecutive Aces (Let me know if that ever happens) and thus once you get that good your would NEVER win again unless all of your opponents shoot worse then their average and you are the only one to shoot your average.  You would never be able to shoot better than average and thus a HCP need only get a stroke or two below norm to beat you.  

As for "Cheating" the system, it only uses the 8 best of 20 rounds so to cause your HCP to move up significantly you need to post a lot of bad rounds to "Push Out" the 8 lowest.  Most golfers have too much pride in their game and will not intentionally play bad frequently enough to artificially inflate the HCP.  If you think a player is manipulating the system, report them to the HCP Committee.  

Edited November 17, 2023 by StuM
Changed "not" to "now" inn 1st paragraph

[Ty_Webb]

Just as an FYI - flights are not something that is typically done in the UK. They sort of have them and she's referring to that with the gold division comment. Most events will be split into two "flights" (called divisions). She's saying her club has silver and bronze. She's in with the silver. I'm not sure exactly where the split is, but it's probably somewhere around 20 or 21 handicap. She's probably a 2 in a club that has few other players at her standard, so if they flight it at under 4 or under 5, she'll quite possibly be in a field of 1. 

Also incidentally, there are probably quite a lot of women who play regularly enough that if they put a card in every time they play, every 3-4 weeks they would have an entirely new set of 20 scores in her history. 

The CONGU system was a ratcheted moving average with a bias downwards. It depended on your handicap what division you were in, but it went from division 1 up to division 6. If you're in division 4 let's say (I think around 21-28 handicap), then play in a competition and you would come down 0.4 strokes for every stroke you were under your handicap. So shoot -4 net and your handicap would come down 1.6. To go up you have to shoot over your handicap and by more than your "division". That's called the buffer zone, so again in division 4, if you shoot over your handicap, but within four shots, then no change. If you're over 4 over, then you go up 0.1 strokes. Whether you shoot 5 over or 25 over you go up 0.1. Consequently it was VERY slow to catch up to a change in ability. For a player with a 25.0 handicap who shoots the following scores, this is what happens to their handicap:

+18 (goes to 25.0 - 7 x 0.4 = 22.2)

+25 no change

+32 (22.2 goes to 22.3)

+20 (goes to 22.3 - 2 x 0.4 = 21.5)

+27 (goes to 21.6)

Then 15 rounds of +35 (21.6 goes to 23.1)

So that little lot would have had them come down from 25 to 23. It would take another 19 rounds outside the buffer zone to get back to 25.0 where she started.

On the new system, assuming that all the rounds are played at the same course, I think the slope calculation falls out, so that player's course handicap would be:

(18 + 25 + 32 + 20 + 27 + 35 + 35 + 35)/8 = 28.4. The new system reacts to the worse level of play very quickly and this player after five more rounds would be 35 handicap. This is a whole heap more fair for the high handicapper, but also explains why the author thinks it's unfair. Remembering that equality feels like oppression for those who have been privileged.

[DeadMan]

Great post, @Ty_Webb. That is very helpful in explaining CONGU and why low handicappers would be upset with the changes.

1 hour ago, Ty_Webb said:

Just as an FYI - flights are not something that is typically done in the UK.

Then this probably needs to change. Or low handicappers will have to get used to not winning. The complaints in this article are similar to a lot of complains I hear from guys in the 2-5 range, so it's not like this is unheard of. Just a lot of whining.

[mdl]

@Ty_Webb thanks for the explanation of the old CONGU system! I don't think your 19 round statement is right. That would depend on what someone shoots! But regardless, the 4 stroke buffer zone by itself obviously strongly biases the system towards a lower handicap. It sounds like the evidence shows that it biased caps downwards more than the 8 or 10 best out of last 20 differentials that the traditional US and now WHS uses does.

The article itself is basically just a whine about variance 😆 It used to be the handicap system in the UK was biased enough against worse players that low cappers won a lot of the time. But it's just a fact that worse players have a much higher variance in their scores. Unless you bias handicaps down so much that a high capper's expected net score of even their best 50% of rounds is well over par – like apparently the old CONGU system did – in unflighted net events high cappers are almost always going to win. That's just statistics.

As Erik and others have said, the obvious solution is flights. Hopefully as time goes on it sets in with club leaders in the UK that unflighted tournaments are too biased against their most dedicated members (where lower cappers are generally over represented) and start to flight their tourneys properly.

[Ty_Webb]

2 hours ago, mdl said:

@Ty_Webb thanks for the explanation of the old CONGU system! I don't think your 19 round statement is right. That would depend on what someone shoots! But regardless, the 4 stroke buffer zone by itself obviously strongly biases the system towards a lower handicap. It sounds like the evidence shows that it biased caps downwards more than the 8 or 10 best out of last 20 differentials that the traditional US and now WHS uses does.

The article itself is basically just a whine about variance 😆 It used to be the handicap system in the UK was biased enough against worse players that low cappers won a lot of the time. But it's just a fact that worse players have a much higher variance in their scores. Unless you bias handicaps down so much that a high capper's expected net score of even their best 50% of rounds is well over par – like apparently the old CONGU system did – in unflighted net events high cappers are almost always going to win. That's just statistics.

As Erik and others have said, the obvious solution is flights. Hopefully as time goes on it sets in with club leaders in the UK that unflighted tournaments are too biased against their most dedicated members (where lower cappers are generally over represented) and start to flight their tourneys properly.

The 19 round statement I did clarify by saying outside of the buffer zone. Basically for every one good round you shoot, you have to shoot four really bad ones to get back to where you started. 

One issue with flighting is the way that competitions tend to work in the UK. There would typically be one monthly medal (stroke play) and one monthly stableford each month. Those you could flight easily enough. The bigger issue would be the 6-10 big events through the year. One would be the club championship. At both my UK clubs, the club championship has a scratch one and a handicap one. One trophy, one board on the wall where your name goes. You can't flight that. Not without saying sorry to everyone not in one specific flight. Some of those boards go back over 100 years. That's an awful lot of tradition that you're throwing away to make the handicap system "fair" again. There is definitely a pocket of players who are not good enough to win the scratch one, but have handicaps too low to realistically compete against a decent sized field of higher handicaps. I get where they would feel aggrieved by that. 

I still think the author of the article is very whiny though.

Edited November 17, 2023 by Ty_Webb
Additional thoughts

[iacas]

4 hours ago, Ty_Webb said:

I think the slope calculation falls out, so that player's course handicap would be:

It doesn't (your score to par is not your differential), and you can't just average eight scores and say that's the new handicap (since many of those wouldn't count in the 8 of 20), but your main point still stands.

[Ty_Webb]

34 minutes ago, iacas said:

It doesn't (your score to par is not your differential), and you can't just average eight scores and say that's the new handicap (since many of those wouldn't count in the 8 of 20), but your main point still stands.

Course rating 72.0; Slope rating 135

Score of 85 - differential is (85-72.0)*113/135 = 10.9.

Shoot that score 20 times and your index is 10.9.

Go play the same course and your course handicap is 10.9 x 135/113 = 13.0 - course handicap is 13 and your score to shoot your handicap is 85. That's true whether slope is 80 or 155, so the slope portion of the calculation falls out if you always play at the same course. If the course rating is not a round number, then it might move a shot one way or the other, but at a high level, this is I think true. When I said falls out, I meant you multiply by 113/SR and then you subsequently calculate the course handicap by multiplying by SR/113, so they cancel out. If you play different courses with different slopes then this doesn't apply anymore. For my very simplified example, I think it does.

And in my example I gave 20 scores, so the best 8 of them is the handicap index and that's what I used.

[mdl]

2 hours ago, Ty_Webb said:

The 19 round statement I did clarify by saying outside of the buffer zone. Basically for every one good round you shoot, you have to shoot four really bad ones to get back to where you started. 

One issue with flighting is the way that competitions tend to work in the UK. There would typically be one monthly medal (stroke play) and one monthly stableford each month. Those you could flight easily enough. The bigger issue would be the 6-10 big events through the year. One would be the club championship. At both my UK clubs, the club championship has a scratch one and a handicap one. One trophy, one board on the wall where your name goes. You can't flight that. Not without saying sorry to everyone not in one specific flight. Some of those boards go back over 100 years. That's an awful lot of tradition that you're throwing away to make the handicap system "fair" again. There is definitely a pocket of players who are not good enough to win the scratch one, but have handicaps too low to realistically compete against a decent sized field of higher handicaps. I get where they would feel aggrieved by that. 

I still think the author of the article is very whiny though.

Sorry this is pedantic but I tend pedant so...

For a division 4 golfer you used to add 0.4 * (Score - (Cap + 4)) to your cap if Score > Cap + 4. That means you can add up to 0.4 * (ESC Max - (Cap + 4)) in a single round. So it's always at least possible to undo a cap lowering in one round! But yeah, I'm just being annoying. Your point about the strong bias downwards remains.

Interesting point about the history of a scratch and a net leaderboard in old clubs. That is super cool and not something I'd want to throw away either. Maybe they should do something like flight it like most American club tourneys and then do a championship net round(s) with only like the top 3 from each flight so it's less often just the outlier high cappers winning net.

[Ty_Webb]

17 minutes ago, mdl said:

Sorry this is pedantic but I tend pedant so...

For a division 4 golfer you used to add 0.4 * (Score - (Cap + 4)) to your cap if Score > Cap + 4. That means you can add up to 0.4 * (ESC Max - (Cap + 4)) in a single round. So it's always at least possible to undo a cap lowering in one round! But yeah, I'm just being annoying. Your point about the strong bias downwards remains.

Interesting point about the history of a scratch and a net leaderboard in old clubs. That is super cool and not something I'd want to throw away either. Maybe they should do something like flight it like most American club tourneys and then do a championship net round(s) with only like the top 3 from each flight so it's less often just the outlier high cappers winning net.

I don't remember it working like that when I lived there (until 2007) - when did that change?

The top 3 from each flight is a pretty decent idea - would probably give the lower handicappers back their advantage.

It's interesting that matchplay is one of the things she complains about. Matchplay would tend to favor lower handicappers because their scores tend to be less volatile, so the rounds where the high handicapper plays well, they're stuffed, but when the high handicapper plays poorly (which happens a lot more often) they'll be well favored. A 2 handicap's bad day might be an 82, while a 22 handicapper's bad day could be 110.

[iacas]

Your score to par is not your differential. A 25.0 index shooting +18 could result in a much lower differential than 18.0.

The overall post was fine, so I'm not really interested in the little pieces of it.

[Ty_Webb]

3 hours ago, iacas said:

Your score to par is not your differential. A 25.0 index shooting +18 could result in a much lower differential than 18.0.

The overall post was fine, so I'm not really interested in the little pieces of it.

Yes I know - that's why I said "the player's course handicap would be..." and not "the player's differential would be..."