faults with ghin?

[iacas]

When viewing someone elses score history, it only lists month and year. Not day.

That's a recent change made to help protect people (a security thing). I think they changed that two years ago.

CEOs were seen as playing golf on days when they "should" have been in the office. And homeowners, let's say you always post a score on Tuesdays and Fridays - a burglar might know the best time to rob your house. Or if you have a stalker, well... Anyway, yeah, that's a recent change for security reasons.

Normal folks cannot run reports. IE. Pull a specific group of people for indexes. You have to have access similar to the folks in the pro shop. Pulling one at a time doesn't work when you need to get 70 people.

If you're pulling 70 people, ask the pro shop to do it for you.

The posting interface is clumsy. Half of our guys still can't seem to figure out how to post a tournament round.

Most clubs take care of that. Failing that, is choosing "Tournament" from the "Type" popup difficult? (That's the website, not the software... again, the tournament typically handles posting tournament scores in the tournaments I've played in.)

The encouragement of knowing your GHIN number for posting sucks.

That's just online isn't it? The two clubs to which I belong simply enter my member number. And when I do, it shows my name right there, so it'd be hard for me to enter the wrong number and keep going to enter a score under someone else.

Online, yeah, I know my GHIN number.

[rjfan91]

That's a recent change made to help protect people (a security thing). I think they changed that two years ago.

We were under the VSGA system up until this year. I liked it better because it allowed me to do more things. I run a lot of tournaments and weekly events and the extra layer is a pain. It also sucks when you are trying to police handicaps. It puts more of a burden on pro shops to help associations; which seem to be barely tolerated nowadays.

That's just online isn't it? The two clubs to which I belong simply enter my member number. And when I do, it shows my name right there, so it'd be hard for me to enter the wrong number and keep going to enter a score under someone else.

I thought your GHIN number was your course number followed by your membership number. Is that right? Anyways, our association member has the same name as the guy posting scores. Online, I just log in using the profile name and password I set up.

[iacas]

I thought your GHIN number was your course number followed by your membership number. Is that right? Anyways, our association member has the same name as the guy posting scores. Online, I just log in using the profile name and password I set up.

Not in whatever system we use, which ties into GHIN and is thus probably "their" official software. I think they even supply the computer (it's a touch-screen CRT at both clubs).

My member number (for example - 821 and 37 at the two clubs I belong to) is all I need to log in to the computer in the pro shop to post my scores. My GHIN number is obviously completely different.

[Leftygolfer]

I dont always post my scores either. Sometimes i just want to play and not worry about all of that handicapping crap.

Then your ghin number isn't accurate. I have never went out and "not cared". I play every hole to the best of my ability. I line up every putt and take my time like I am playing for money.

That is just me. I just care alot about improving and want my rounds to be as good as possible. I feel like when I compete I am better prepared because I line up the two footers than opposed to the people who they are just given to them. And you know a way to get around this (sand bagging and such) Play in scratch only tournements. There is the only place peoples dishonesty will not matter. That is where I want to be. I am not there but I hope to be some day.

[Que]

Good discussion...

I understand what I proposed (a handicap consisting of only competitive rounds) would be tough logistically and it would require a complete overhaul of the current system. I don't really expect it to happen, I just wish maybe it could.

I said we don't have a handicap committee at our club (this is not a country club..it's a men's club at a public facility). That's not entirely correct. I guess I was the handicapp committee up until this year when I finally decided I'd had enough (amazing...no one else has stepped up to take on this task ) That's where my frustration/skepticism with handciaps comes from. Therefore, I understand that if a club is diligent handicaps can be fairly well controlled within that club.

But, tell me this. If your state golf association, or the USGA for that matter, put on a state or national tournament on a net basis, how confident would you be that it would not take a series of "exceptional" scores to win the tournament?? If it takes an "exceptional" score to win the tournament, how legitimate is the system as a whole? I think we are all confident that we have the handicaps under control for the most part when we are only dealing with the guys we normally play with. It's when we go outside that community that we (or at least I) lose comfort.

[iacas]

I understand what I proposed (a handicap consisting of only competitive rounds) would be tough logistically and it would require a complete overhaul of the current system. I don't really expect it to happen, I just wish maybe it could.

WHY do you still wish for it to exist? Rather large problems with your proposed solution have been unearthed in this thread. And are you unaware that, in the current system, your index can be adjusted according to your tournament rounds? Typically it is adjusted down (for sandbaggers), but it can be adjusted up too.

But, tell me this. If your state golf association, or the USGA for that matter, put on a state or national tournament on a net basis, how confident would you be that it would not take a series of "exceptional" scores to win the tournament?? If it takes an "exceptional" score to win the tournament, how legitimate is the system as a whole? I think we are all confident that we have the handicaps under control for the most part when we are only dealing with the guys we normally play with. It's when we go outside that community that we (or at least I) lose comfort.

So you hate sandbaggers? Welcome to the club. But that's almost a whole different topic entirely... and one that's been discussed here many times.

And they're probably the reason the USGA doesn't bother to put on state or national net tournaments.

[Leftygolfer]

GHIN is great if you use it. It really lets you know if you are improving. Do you think I wanted to post a 92? I got 4 hours of sleep and the course got a ton of rain, but I did becuase that is what I shot. My index has went up 1.3 points in 2 revisions. Is it because of course conditions or some outside factor? No, I lost control and it is telling me I need to do something different. It told me in one number I am getting worse and something is wrong. For that purpose ghin is great. If people were honest you could have great net events. But people aren't so if you want a true test of skill you have to play in a gross events and you got to be good.

[ChiChiIsMe]

I believe that if GHIN is to be accurate, it needs to record competitive rounds of golf only.

Cool! My Handicap will be based off the 4 competitive rounds I play a year and not the other 50!

[david17589]

Does anyone else find the GHIN system a bit faulty? Not the math...I believe that works pretty well for the most part. I also believe in equitable stroke control. In general, I believe if folks used the system as intended, it's fine. The problem is, too many don't. And I'm not just talking about "sandbaggers" here. I believe true sandbaggers are few and far between and are fairly easy to identify and deal with.

yes i had the same problem but then i got some to com and fix it an pay'd a small fee but sorry dont know what they done

[zeg]

But, tell me this. If your state golf association, or the USGA for that matter, put on a state or national tournament on a net basis, how confident would you be that it would not take a series of "exceptional" scores to win the tournament?? If it takes an "exceptional" score to win the tournament, how legitimate is the system as a whole? I think we are all confident that we have the handicaps under control for the most part when we are only dealing with the guys we normally play with. It's when we go outside that community that we (or at least I) lose comfort.

Depending on exactly what you mean by exceptional, it would not be rare at all for tournaments to be won by exceptional scores, even if the handicap system were perfectly applied. The odds that one person scores well better than his handicap would predict in a given round is fairly low, but when you have a large number of players in the field, it's almost certain that a few will go lower than usual. I'd actually rarely expect someone playing right to their handicap to win.

This would probably also be magnified as you allow higher handicappers into the field. Someone playing right around scratch doesn't have much room to have an exceptionally good day. A 30-handicapper on the other hand could easily do better than usual by, I dunno, 5 strokes just by putting really well on a given day, so the statistical effect will be much larger.

[iacas]

This would probably also be magnified as you allow higher handicappers into the field. Someone playing right around scratch doesn't have much room to have an exceptionally good day. A 30-handicapper on the other hand could easily do better than usual by, I dunno, 5 strokes just by putting really well on a given day, so the statistical effect will be much larger.

All answered here:

http://www.usga.org/playing/handicap...eanstable.html

[zeg]

Thanks for that link. Interestingly enough, the numbers I carefully estimated (read: pulled out of my ass) of a 30 HCP and 5 under (interpreting "usual" to mean sub-par differential which is slightly wrong...) gives odds of 35:1. Thus, if you've got 35 30-handicappers in a tournament, you'd actually expect at least one of them to go 5 under every single time. The hypothetical 35 scratch golfers in the field will only even tie this 35/379 ~ 10% of the time.

Interesting. Granted, there are some questionable statistical assumptions here, but this suggests that the handicaps are actually broken after all, at least for tournament purposes.