Dean Knuth's Blog Post on the WHS

[iacas]

In the 1970s and 1980s, Dean Knuth, who became known as the "Pope of Slope," created the handicap system as well as the course rating system. He consulted with the USGA through 2002, but hasn't really had a hand in the handicapping since then, and was not involved in the WHS.

Suffice to say, he does not like the WHS, and he wrote an article expressing why:  https://www.popeofslope.com/world-handicap-system.html.

The problem? His article… well, it's bad. Here is a brief (for me!) exploration of that article. Part 1 includes the bulk of his point, right up until the section labeled "The Par Pitfall," here:

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In an effort to create a process that every golf association in the world can accept (One Size Fits All concept), the USGA has downgraded the handicap system in the United States.

The handicapping system has seen almost no changes in the U.S. It's the rest of the world where they've seen the biggest changes.

In the U.S., ESC was replaced by NDB, we have soft and hard caps, and we use 8/20 instead of 10/20 at 96%. Those are the only real changes.

Dean will spend most of the rest of the time talking about par, but — and this cannot be stressed enough — the par is irrelevant. Its role in determining your playing or course handicap does three things only:

• It makes the score you have to shoot to "play to your handicap" make a lot more sense.
• It "bakes in" the changes players should have made but rarely did when playing from different tees.
• Through NDB, it defines the holes on which you can take a triple (or which you can take a gross bogey if you're on the + side of scratch).

The calculation of your differential at the end is completely unaffected and does not involve par. Dean will spend a good amount of the time in this article talking about how par is "less precise" than the rating and slope, but he seems to miss the two points here:

• Par is an integer. If it helps him to think of it as 72.000000 or something, by all means, Dean…
• Par is used only to adjust another whole number: the strokes a player gets on the course. We don't give 10.4 strokes — a 10.4 index player might get 13, 10, 8, or whatever number of whole-number strokes.

 

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A par handicap results when par is part of the calculation that creates a Playing Handicap or Course Handicap.

The problem with this type of statement is that the "par handicap" could be "7" or "13" or "88" and except for affecting NDB, players competing against each other would have the same difference (except they'd still need to adjust for playing from different tees).

Let's say a 10.4 and a 14.7 are playing a 71.5/127 course. Par is 72.

(10.4 * 127/113) + 71.5 - 72 = 11.2 -> 11 strokes
(14.7 * 127/113) + 71.5 - 72 = 16.0 -> 16 strokes -> this player gets 5 strokes

Instead of 72, plug in 23 because it's your favorite number:

(10.4 * 127/113) + 71.5 - 23 = 60.2 -> 60 strokes
(14.7 * 127/113) + 71.5 - 23 = 65.0 -> 65 strokes -> this player gets 5 strokes

They still get the strokes they deserve (5), but we've lost the meaning as players now get 60 strokes off a 10 handicap.

Remove the course rating and… you're back at the same problem as we've had where players weren't doing the calculation properly, and we lose the first benefit of "playing to your handicap". An example of that, with a 12.3 index player playing on a 68.7/123 rated par 72 course.

Properly: (12.3 * 123/113) + 68.7 - 72 = 10.1 -> 10 strokes

Improperly: 12.3 * 123/113 = 13.4 -> 13 strokes

If the player plays a "net even par" round of golf, he'll shoot 82 and 85. Here's why this makes sense:

WHS: (82 - 68.7) * 113 / 123 = 12.2 differential
Prior: (85 - 68.7) * 113 / 123 = 14.97 -> 15.0 differential

The player "played to his handicap" with a net even par round in shooting the 82, which aligns with getting ten strokes, not 13.

This makes way more sense and is in fact an improvement over the prior system for two of the three reasons listed above:

• It more closely aligns the index and the score you have to shoot to "shoot your handicap"
• It bakes in players playing from different tees.

 

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As you know, par was not a factor in the American system of handicap calculation, nor need it have been. One's handicap index was adjusted not by par but by course rating to create a playing handicap, or what we continue to call a Course Handicap. A course's rating, not its par, is what's important.

Par is not a factor in determining the differential in the WHS system, only the playing handicap. The only way it affects the differential is that it can award a triple bogey on a few more holes (or a gross bogey max to a few + handicappers playing shorter tees) in determining NDB. You can completely ignore the WHS system of calculating your playing handicap and your differentials — the calculation of which does not use par - is going to be almost exactly the same (again, differing only when you tripled a hole on which you wouldn't have gotten NDB but now do because you didn't do the subtraction part of the WHS course/playing handicap calculation).

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Why was par added to the handicap calculation then? Because it's already part of handicap systems in some other countries.

Or maybe it was because of the other three reasons listed above. Which were the reasons given to me back in 2017 and 2018 when I talked with some of the people responsible for helping to create the WHS. If the ease of adoption by other countries and regions, then that's a fourth reason. But, I didn't really hear much about it prior to the WHS being instituted.

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Because points are used, this formula added a step beyond the American calculation (Handicap Index times Slope Rating divided by 113). In Stableford-based systems, a final step is added: add Course Rating minus par to make it easier for those players to compare their performance to par scores.

A similar step was also required when players played from different tees, yet this was frequently forgotten. Players used to playing the blue tees would move up to the whites and expect to keep their 13 strokes, and be dismayed and sometimes even angered and argumentative that they would only get 10.

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Then comes rounding off, which introduces other errors, not only in the round-off but often in "over-spreading" of the resulting handicaps.

This literally makes no sense. There's no more or less rounding than in previous versions. The output of "HI * Slope/113" typically produced a decimal number, the output of "HI * Slope/113 + CR - Par" also produces a decimal number, and the output of "Score * 113/Slope" (which is unchanged) also produces a decimal number. Each are rounded just as they were before.

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In short, an approximation is approximated again, making it less reliable mathematically.

No, Dean is way off base here. Even if you accept that "par is an approximation" (of course difficulty), it's not used as he suggests. A player playing a par-72 that's rated 75 will get more COURSE handicap strokes than a player playing a par-72 that's rated 67, but that makes sense. At the end of the round, their score is processed using the same old formula to get their differential as always.

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The adjustment for the difference in Course Rating when competing from different tees (previously called Section 3-5 in the handicap manual) has gone away - which is unfortunate because the difference in Course Rating is the only exact way to make score comparisons-- and now is supposedly "built-in" to the new par-based formula.

This is about where I start to wonder and worry about Dean's mental faculties at his nearly 80 years of age. It hasn't "gone away" - it's been built-in as he says, and I think it's fairly obvious that this is true.

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But what's really built in is a wider margin of error. What does the Course Rating minus Par adjustment really represent? It is the error of Par as a "descriptor" of playing difficulty.

No it is not. It is what I've said above, which is what the USGA and R&A have said it is.

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Course Rating is universally accepted as the most accurate measure of relative difficulty for the Scratch golfer and the Course Rating minus Par is the magnitude of the Par's error measured against that accurate value.

I agree that the course rating is the "most accurate measure of the relative difficulty for the scratch golfer" (I mean, it's almost exactly the defeinition), and slope determines the relative difficulty between two levels of player. So, which of these formulas incorporates BOTH the CR and the Slope in determining a player's course handicap:

a. (HI * Slope/113) + CR - Par
b. (HI * Slope/113)

Clearly A incorporates "the most accurate measure of the relative difficulty" (as well as the measure of the relative difficulty). Dean's favored formula did NOT include "the most accurate measure of the relative difficulty for the scratch golfer". A scratch golfer under Dean's preferred method could shoot an even par round of 72 and see a differential that ranged from +2.7 (75.4/140) to 5.5 (66.3/118) or something. Under the WHS, if they shoot net par, they're going to end up with about a 0.0 differential.

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So, the par handicap is the true handicap measured against the most accurate value corrected for the error inherent in the least accurate value — par.

No. Again, you could subtract any integer from the Course Rating (which again the WHS ADDS to the calculation in course/playing handicap that the older system did not) and get the same relative course handicaps for all players. Using par just helps it make the most sense to actual golfers. It's an integer… as are the scores we shoot and the pars of the holes we play.

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But USGA was intent on jumping right into the change on January 1 declaring that it would only impact American golfers by less than a stroke and it would be easier for golfers to equate their scores to par.

The addition of the "CR - Par" has almost no effect on a player's differential. Again, the only affect it would have is when NDB is applied, because there may be a few holes where they'd get a stroke that they do not. And even then, it requires the player to card a triple on that specific hole, and be among their 8 out of 20 counting scores, AND even then if it happens once a round in ALL of the eight rounds, it's about 1 stroke on their index (probably a bit less given that most slopes are > 113).

This has nothing to do with "jumping in" and everything to do with the foundational reasons for adding (CR - Par). Dean sees it as "adding par" when he would more accurately see it as adding the Course Rating!

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Using the best 8 of 20 scores (against the old 96% of 10 of 20) already tends to lower handicaps…

Small point of order: this was not shown to be accurate. The 96% applied to all 10 scores almost perfectly offset the dropping of two middle scores. Some players indexes went up a little. Some went down a little. The net change was almost exactly 0.

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What golfers will know is that, in most cases, their course handicap has been reduced if their normal tees have a Course Rating under par.

Yes, that's how math works. The change makes MORE sense, again, as a player shooting net par under the WHS has basically "shot their handicap". Shoot below net par and your handicap will likely go down. Shoot above it and it may go up a little (less chance of this than shooting under lowering it, though, of course).

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Players who always play from the same tees at their club will see another inconsistency. If, for example, the Course Rating is 70.5 and Par is 71, the calculation of Course Rating Minus Par (.5) means, based on the way the tables are created, that half the players will have a Course Handicap one lower than they had before the new system and half will not!

So? Half of the players who play a 72.5/72-par course will see their Course Handicap one higher than they had before the system and half will not!

Also and again, players who play a course rated 68.7 par-72 will all see their course handicaps drop several strokes. That's just math, and the boundaries of rounding. Dean chose a 0.5 marker, but the same math is true at any level, because the HI already has a decimal, and the Slope/113 multiplier also tends to produce decimals. So, someone who previously had a 10.5 to 10.9 index will still be an 11, while the 10.0s to 10.4s will go up to 11s. But on another course where the decimals work out to 0.3 and 0.2… the same math applies. And on a course where the decimals work out to 0.8… players half of the players will get an "extra" stroke and half will not.

This is just rounding. It's always been a part of the WHS. The point at which rounding occurs might move slightly (depending on the course and index in question) for half of the situations, but if you have a 10.0 and an 11.5… or a 10.5 and an 12.0… half of the time the higher handicapper will get the "extra" stroke, and half the time the lower handicapper will get the "extra" stroke.

This is just how rounding works.

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The United States isn't a predominantly Stableford playing country. We play a lot of match play, where handicaps have a huge impact.

Handicaps in match play are almost entirely unaffected. A 13 playing a 10 might now be a 10 playing a 7, but the difference is still the same size. You're subtracting out a constant (CR - Par) from both players. The (HI * Slope/113) remains the same.

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By adopting all of the new WHS elements, we have adopted a World system that is not as accurate as what we have enjoyed.

This makes no sense and Dean has absolutely failed to provide any basis for this "less accurate" while ignoring that the WHS ADDS the CR to the course handicap calculation.

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The new WHS alters a 40-year-old course-rating-based handicap system in favor of a "net par," which is, the USGA argues, easier for golfers to grasp.

It is easier. Shoot net par and you've "played to your handicap."

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Steve Edmondson, the current USGA Senior Handicap Director stated: "We can't get clubs to apply section 3-5 today because it is simply unintuitive." John Bodenhamer, added: "Golfers have indeed found it difficult to disconnect par from the equation."

Yes, and what they say is both accurate and makes sense. The WHS method bakes in the "playing from different tees" and makes it easier to know what it takes to "play to your handicap."

Those are my notes right up until "The Par Pitfall." Dean has yet to make a valid point in any of this blog post thus far.

When I have the time, and feel like procrastinating a bit more like today, I'll continue with my response to this blog post.

I respect what Dean did in creating the original handicap system and the course ratinga system. The course rating system is one of the most elegant solutions to a very complex problem that I have ever seen. Nothing done by the WHS changes that. The course rating system is relatively unchanged, and its application in the WHS is, again, MORE accurate by the inclusion of the Course Rating than the previous system, in addition to the other benefits.

Dean deserves (and has been given) much credit for that. But, if this is how he thinks these days, Dean can remain Pope Emeritus but the Cardinals need to elect a new Pope.