Quick question about slope and course rating

[jwkde]

In your "quick game" you say that you are taking drops instead of looking for the ball.

Admirable in terms of pace of place on a crowded course but how do you include those in the scores you post as part of your handicap?

[B.T.]

In your "quick game" you say that you are taking drops instead of looking for the ball.

GREAT QUESTION!!!

If the course is NOT marked with out of bounds stakes and the score card does not say one way or the other, for pace of play reasons, play everything as a lateral (red stake) and play from there. If there is an out of bounds stake, I would drop and count is as if you had just reteed to that point. MOST people WOULDN'T play this way, but its amirable for those that do.

[TarDawg]

In your "quick game" you say that you are taking drops instead of looking for the ball.

I don't have the same problem now loosing balls off the tee and what not. IF I do i generally drop where i'm standing and take my penalty stroke. Again I don't take practice swings so I'm still pretty quick.

When I would hit OB and just drop out I wasn't keeping score for my handicap anyway so it's sort of a moot point. Actually I just started truly keeping my score for the full 18 as normally I would just stop keeping score and just enjoy the rest of my round minus worrying about my round. Quick antidote. I was having a decent round today until my playing partner hit a hole in one on a 120 yard par 3. Not trying to out do him I nuked a Pitching wedge long and left off the cart path and landed on the green behind the hole we were playing. Took my drop from the tee box (today there were 2 groups of 4 somes stacked up on tee boxes in front of us so was going no where fast) moved down to a gap wedge stuck the shot 15 feet from the pin and proceeded to 3 put from there for a triple bogey. Needless to say my round was shot after that as I couldn't get out of my own way. I hit only 2 greens in reg. on the front 9 and 0 yes 0 on the back nine. ugh what a day. But all the congrats in the world to my playing partner as that was his first hole in one.

[JessN16]

GREAT QUESTION!!!

Same here. If we hit a marked OOB, we'd go back and hit in accordance with the rules. Otherwise, we'd play it as a lateral, drop and hit +1 stroke from the last point the ball crossed before it became lost.

We'd probably end up shooting higher scores if we played it by the book, but something to remember here is if you're turning in lower scores than you really shot, you're hurting no one but yourself, as you're just stiffing yourself out of handicap. In my own case, I'd rather miss my "true" scores by a stroke or two at the end of the day than cause someone's round of golf to become a 5- or 6-hour affair, either my playing partners or the guys on the tee behind me. Jess

[Q.Q.Quillume]

If you shot 96, you're about a 17.7 index on that course. That's quite a bit away from a 32 and changes much of what I said (which was geared towards a 32 index).

FWIW I checked the index listings for my course and found a guy with an index of 32.5 to get an idea of what a real "32" would be likely to shoot. (I couldn't find anybody closer to 32.0 than 32.5).

In his last 25 rounds: * he played courses with rating of 68.5 - 72.4 but only three of the 25 rounds were at coures rated at higher than 69.8. * he played courses with a slope of 120 - 130 but only one of the 25 courses was rated at 130 and 22 of the 25 rounds were played on courses rated 120, 121 or 122. * he posted only one score of 100 and none of 99 or better in 25 rounds. In the event anybody is wondering why 25 rounds instead of 20, the CGA (Carolinas Golf Association) lists the 20 most recent rounds, the ones used to compute the current index plus the previous five rounds.