Another Handicap Question

[Golfing Dad]

I looked back as for a 2008 on this site and couldn't find any answers to questions I had about handicaps so I hope no one minds me asking (most people on this site seem pretty nice)

I have been keeping my son's handicap for the last few weeks because he has been playing 18 holes instead of 9.
His home course is rated a 70.2 with a slope of 122 from the whites and is around 6300 yards. His scores are in the mid 90's to the low 100's with a 110 and a 112 on two bad rounds. Using just the scores from his home course his handicap was around a 20 after 7 rounds.

Recently he had a tournament and we went to the tournament course a few days before and played a few rounds. Being that the tournament is a shorter distance than what he usually plays, he played four rounds from the reds, which is around 5500 yards. The tournament course has a rating of 76.2 with a slope of 127. For four rounds he shot between 90 and 94.

If I include all 11 of his scores in his handicap index it comes out to be 15.2. Could that be correct? I saw on another thread that a person hits their handicap about 1 out of every 5 times they play, but if he has never even hit an 87 how could that be his handicap? It seems too low.

[tulefog]

Each course will have a separate rating for each set of tees. Are you sure that you are using the red tee rating for the tournament course?

[Golfing Dad]

Yes I am sure

[double_j]

I looked back as for a 2008 on this site and couldn't find any answers to questions I had about handicaps so I hope no one minds me asking (most people on this site seem pretty nice)

76.2 rating from 5,500 yards? That's huge! Must be 5000 yards of pure carry!

Just think of it away from the strict calculations though. If he really shot 18 to 22 over on a course where a scratch golfer is expected to go more than 4 stokes above par, then that would roughly translate to something in the lowish mid teens once slope is factored in. The results of your calculation seem to make sense - it's the course rating that I question.

[alf174]

How are you calculating his handicap? Are you normalizing by factoring in the slopes?

[Kieran123]

And a slope of 127 from the red tees? What is is from the tips? 135 at least? That sounds like a tough course

[double_j]

And a slope of 127 from the red tees? What is is from the tips? 135 at least? That sounds like a tough course

For perspective - red tee ratings from a couple of well-known courses: Pebble Beach: 71.8/129, Doral Blue Monster: 71.3/126, Bethpage Black: 71.4/130. The only course I found with ratings similar to the OPs (in an admittedly short search) was Oakmont: 75.6/136.

Tough course indeed. Those kids are in for quite a tourney.

[Golfing Dad]

And a slope of 127 from the red tees? What is is from the tips? 135 at least? That sounds like a tough course

Then that must be the problem. On the scorecard next to the red tee yardage it says 127/76.2, but right below that it has a line that says, "Women's Par 118/72.0." On the courses' website it has those reversed.

I called the course and they said that information was correct. Something must be wrong because it was not a very hard course.

[iacas]

The red tee course rating is for women.

[RemyM]

The red tee course rating is for women.

That's what it sounds like to me too.

If those tees don't have a rating for men then you can come up with one by using the chart here: http://www.usga.org/bookrule.aspx?id=14379#5-2 You need to know the rating and slope of the next tees rated for men and use the difference in yardage to subtract course rating and slope from the men's rating.