Handicap is a handicap???

[Ignorant]

It's far more likely that one of the 20 high handicaps are going to score 5 strokes under their handicap than that one of the low handicaps is.

That would be true if your handicap was based on the true average deviation from course rating, modified for slope. But it isn't, it is the best 10 rounds of the last 20. So it isn't a true average of your performance, and the USGA will also say that. It is an evaluation of your POTENTIAL scoring ability. So eliminating the worst rounds of a high handicap player Vs a low handicap player likely will make if more difficult to play to that handicap for the high handicap player. Stated differently the high handicap player's bad 10 include some that have a lot bigger deviation from the the course rating than the low handicap player so elimination of these has a larger influence on handicap and lower his handicap from his true average score more. So I think that one on one metal play the low handicap player beats the high handicap player 3 times out of 4.

I have to agree with B-Con on this one. Even though the USGA handicap system levels up the overall performance of recent rounds it still does not (and it certainly SHOULD not) mitigate the potential of an individual player to perform much better than on the average.

A high-handicapper is far more likely to be the one to produce a net score of 6 under par than a low-handicapper just because the variation of good and bad rounds is much larger for him. This is the way it is, take it or leave it.

[Fourputt]

Do any of you notice that handicaps only benefit those with higher ones or am I just a sore looser?

If your club isn't flighting their handicapped tournaments then you haven't got a prayer. Handicap stroke play tournaments should be flighted so that the handicap disparity is no more than about 3 strokes within the flight. If they aren't doing that then you need to decide if that's the sort of club you really want to be in. In a match the problem isn't as pronounced because it's just you and your opponent, but in stroke play where you may be going against 20 bogey golfers, you are hosed. In any group of 20 bogey golfers there are bound to be two or three who shoot well below their handicap. That is the variable nature of the bogey golfer. The odds of you doing so are slim and none, thus in such a competition you really have no chance to win. It isn't sandbagging, it's just how the game works. The more room you have to improve, the more likely it is that you will occasionally shoot an exceptional score. My club plays most stroke play tournaments with first or championship flight playing scratch, so handicaps don't even come into play for the better players.

[sean_miller]

If your club isn't flighting their handicapped tournaments then you haven't got a prayer. Handicap stroke play tournaments should be flighted so that the handicap disparity is no more than about 3 strokes within the flight. If they aren't doing that then you need to decide if that's the sort of club you really want to be in. In a match the problem isn't as pronounced because it's just you and your opponent, but in stroke play where you may be going against 20 bogey golfers, you are hosed. In any group of 20 bogey golfers there are bound to be two or three who shoot well below their handicap. That is the variable nature of the bogey golfer. The odds of you doing so are slim and none, thus in such a competition you really have no chance to win. It isn't sandbagging, it's just how the game works. The more room you have to improve, the more likely it is that you will occasionally shoot an exceptional score. My club plays most stroke play tournaments with first or championship flight playing scratch, so handicaps don't even come into play for the better players.

That's actually one of many reasons I don't play in tournaments. On an average day I will lose to a 2 handicap. It's almost a guarantee, yet I'll probably end up playing him straight up. No thank you.

[mdl]

That would be true if your handicap was based on the true average deviation from course rating, modified for slope. But it isn't, it is the best 10 rounds of the last 20. So it isn't a true average of your performance, and the USGA will also say that. It is an evaluation of your POTENTIAL scoring ability. So eliminating the worst rounds of a high handicap player Vs a low handicap player likely will make if more difficult to play to that handicap for the high handicap player. Stated differently the high handicap player's bad 10 include some that have a lot bigger deviation from the the course rating than the low handicap player so elimination of these has a larger influence on handicap and lower his handicap from his true average score more. So I think that one on one metal play the low handicap player beats the high handicap player 3 times out of 4.

I don't think this rebuts the argument you're trying to rebut. It's true that those couple blow up rounds are eliminated from a mid to high capper's HC, so if a 10 has a round once in a while where he shoots 98 that's not going to start pulling his HC up to a 12 or 13 and give him a huge advantage in a net score tourney. But even given that, you figure a scratch golfer's best 10 out of his last 20 might have a range of no more than 6 or 7 shots. Pretend for a second everyone plays the exact same course all the time, so we can ignore the course ratings and differential calculations and whatnot. Say a scratch golfer's best 10 out of 20 range from -3 to +3. The 10's best 10 out of 20 probably range from something like +5 to +15. The 10 capper, even given his one or two +25 rounds aren't included in his handicap, still has more variance and thus more chance to beat his own handicap on a single day by more than the scratch golfer does. If your club does two or three day tourney's, then the advantage should be mitigated somewhat, and everyone's chances should return to about even, assuming no sandbaggers.

[soloredd]

Do any of you notice that handicaps only benefit those with higher ones or am I just a sore looser?

So, you are one of those that believe two wrongs make a right. Hmm. And I thought golf was about integrity, respect, and being a gentleman/woman. I was following your argument until that last sentence. Weak.

I guess you need to ask yourself why you play in tournaments.

[Fourputt]

That would be true if your handicap was based on the true average deviation from course rating, modified for slope. But it isn't, it is the best 10 rounds of the last 20. So it isn't a true average of your performance, and the USGA will also say that. It is an evaluation of your POTENTIAL scoring ability. So eliminating the worst rounds of a high handicap player Vs a low handicap player likely will make if more difficult to play to that handicap for the high handicap player. Stated differently the high handicap player's bad 10 include some that have a lot bigger deviation from the the course rating than the low handicap player so elimination of these has a larger influence on handicap and lower his handicap from his true average score more. So I think that one on one metal play the low handicap player beats the high handicap player 3 times out of 4.

But we aren't talking one on one here. We are talking about playing stroke play with an entire field, about half of which will be mid to high handicappers. It is MUCH easier for a higher handicapper to wake up and shoot a lifetime score simply because he has more room in which to fall into such a round. All of a sudden for one round his bad shots all get good bounces, and his chipping feel seems to be right on for once, and he holes a few 5 - 10 foot putts, and miraculously he posts a net score of 7 or 8 under par. Everything is legitimate, but he just has one of those days that can happen to a golfer.

Make that a field of 100 players and say 20 are under 10 handicap. That leaves 80 players with significant amounts of wiggle room in their otherwise average to below average handicaps. This is the sort of thing that I think the OP is referring to, and it is extremely difficult for a low handicapper to compete equally under those conditions. I'm one of those who would give them fits with my current 12.2 index, yet I still have the potential to shoot a 76-79 on my par 72 home course about 4 times a year. That translates to a 63 to 66 net... tough for a 1 handicap to post such a score. If we are playing in a head to head match, the odds are against me shooting one of those low rounds that particular day, but if he is facing a field of 80 such players, the odds that at least 2 or 3 of them will post an exceptional net round is very high. I've played in a handicap Men's Club for 21 years and this is where the system breaks down (it simply isn't designed to work in this situation). I can look at the leader boards for each flight for just about any tournament we run and 2 or 3 guys from the lower flights will out net the leaders in first flight, even after you apply handicaps to the first flight players. As a result we just don't set up our competitions that way. Our stroke play tournaments are always flighted so that nobody has to compete against anyone with a significantly different handicap. It's the only way that the handicap system works fairly in a stroke competition with a large and widely varied field

[ghalfaire]

OK I concede that if we're discussing that in a tournament with some distribution of low to high handicaps and significant numbers of players then it is more likely on a given day the at least one of the high handicaps will shoot a career round resulting in a very low net that would be difficult for even Tiger to beat. I guess most tournaments I play other than ABCD or Charity scrambles are more than one day events and that the likelihood of a high handicap doing this two days or more in a row is pretty small. My other comment is that most tournaments, but again I concede not all, are flighted so that low handicaps don't compete with high handicaps. Last comment is that you're right that handicaps don't really work well when there is a large variations between players and a significant numbers of players. But I stick to my analysis that 3 times out of 4 a low handicap will beat the higher handicap player in stroke play one on one.

[newtogolf]

Handicapping is a way to even the playing field, but it's not flawless. As fourputt states, the fairest for all are flighted tournaments. We had similar problems when I entered bowling leagues and tournaments, but there it was always about money, and most of the top bowlers were sandbaggers and bowled only as good as they needed to to beat their opponent.

Based on my limited experience around golfers it seems golfers are more likely to try to cheat themselves by posting scores that are accurate or lower than they actually scored, resulting in a lower handicap.

[golf nut]

I am convinced that when an 18 cap plays a 4 cap, either stroke, match or Stableford, that the handicaps should be modified, and differently for either of the three games.

[Fourputt]

I am convinced that when an 18 cap plays a 4 cap, either stroke, match or Stableford, that the handicaps should be modified, and differently for either of the three games.

If you want to be fair, then an 18 really shouldn't even try to play a 4 in stroke play unless they know each other and and can make a fair adjustment between them. The system just doesn't work very well for this, and there is no "standard" adjustment I know of that would work for all situations.

In a match, they should wheel off the lower handicap... meaning that the 4 plays scratch and the 18 gets 14 strokes - 7 on each side on the appropriately rated handicap holes. Assuming that both are honest handicaps, the system works quite well for almost any match. I've played matches where I was giving more than 20 strokes and we still took the match right down to the 18th hole. For Stableford I really don't know as we only play Stableford in flighted tournaments like we do stroke play.

[sean_miller]

The guys who shot net negative scores are cheaters and sandbaggers and the guys shooting net 80 are posers and vanity cappers.

Playing a round with players of various talent levels is driving in rush hour traffic. The guy passing you is a maniac and the guy you're following is a tool who can't find the gas pedal.

[B-Con]

55% weighted in favour of the lower handicap player I reckon if this link is anything to go by:

Agreed. I'd bet on the low handicapper if I had to blindly choose one, but when the edge is only a 5 or even 10% probability, I think the characteristics of the individuals at stake are far more important than that kind of minor margin. I tend to think that probabilities in a situation like this are "significant" when they outweigh the individual characteristics of the players involved. But your point is absolutely correct.

Stated differently the high handicap player's bad 10 include some that have a lot bigger deviation from the the course rating than the low handicap player so elimination of these has a larger influence on handicap and lower his handicap from his true average score more. So I think that one on one metal play the low handicap player beats the high handicap player 3 times out of 4.

Speaking strictly in one-on-one context...

Like luckyluke pointed out, there is a good point to this argument. I think I misspoke originally when I said "Again, one-on-one I think it's pretty well accepted that neither the high nor low handicapper has an advantage...", perhaps I should have said "has a strong advantage". I'll definitely accept that the low handicapper has a slight advantage. But I don't think he has a 3 in 4 advantage. Take Mr. LH vs Mr. HH. Mr. LH has a spread of -3 to +4 throughout his best 15 of the last 20 games. Mr. HH has a spread of -5 to +8 of his best 15 of the last 20 games. We're going to ignore the worst five games from both of them because I think it's pretty obvious that LH's worst five will be better than HH's worst five. So, if HH scores in his worst 5 times he automatically loses. However, if he scores in his top three games, odds are he will win because his best games are relatively better than LH's best games. The only contest lies in how they will perform in their middle 12 games. In there, LH has a better change of beating HH because HH has tendency to shoot in the range of -2 to +4 whereas LH is basically going to shoot pretty consistently +/-2 in that region. So from those games, maybe LH wins 65% of the time (scores are more concentrated around the mean, less concentrated toward those edge cases). Couple it with the 5/8 wins from the edge cases, and he's going to win roughly 60 to 65% of the time. A noticeable advantage, but I would be reluctant to give him better than 65% odds, and would tend toward guessing (based on just my own reasoning) 60%. This analysis would look better with a bell curve, so let me re-sketch it that way: I'm imagining two overlayed bell curves with mid points on top of each other, the LH with a tighter curve and the HH with a wider curve, where the curves represent the scores from their last 20 games. HH's curve a little more skewed toward high scores. I'm shading out the extreme ends of the HH curve saying if he shoots to either extreme he is basically guaranteed to win/lose, respectively, then just comparing the mass of the bell curves in the area where there is competition. HH has more mass there but not a lot more, just enough to give him a 60:40 or 65:35 ratio, and thus a 60% - 65% of winning. That my reasoning, at any rate.

[ghalfaire]

I guess that an earlier statement somewhere on some thread that I made applies here too. Statistics/probability theory is kind of tricky. To know the odds of the outcome any two specific individuals of LH and HH playing a match you'd have to know a lot more about them and their past performance on the golf course. So the 3 out of 4 comment is one that assumes we select a large number of LH and HH players to play several metal matches, 30 matches or more to get a good statistical representation of golfers at large. So the experiment would be to at random select 40 golfers from a group of 5 handicap players and 40 from a group of 18 handicap players. Then at random set up 40 metal play matches using one golfer from each group and record the results. It was my contention that the lower handicap group would win approximately 30 those matches. This result would not necessarily say that John (5 handicap) would beat Jim (18 handicap) 3 times in 4 matches (although he might). You would have to take a look at their individual past performances, including the rounds the USGA throws out, to make any predictions on John and Jim matches.

[65withatriple]

I cannot understand Your problem. With Your handicap You should not bother about hcp competitions but exclusively play on national tours or other scratch competitions.

I play in many other flighted tournaments outside of my club but my club has many member only tournaments that should be fair and fun. Just not the case with so many illegitiment handicaps.

If they don't turn in scores there sandbagging. It isn't the system, its the players. I play with a really good player (right around a scratch) and he seems to shot around par. Me on the other hand always seem to be around 81. My index isn't current right now but when it is (next year) I'll turn in every score and feel confident I could figure out the course handicap, play at 100% and have a very fair game.

My point exactly.

So, you are one of those that believe two wrongs make a right. Hmm. And I thought golf was about integrity, respect, and being a gentleman/woman. I was following your argument until that last sentence. Weak.

Get off your high horse. I like to compete.

[zeg]

Get off your high horse. I like to compete.

While I think soloredd could have been less abrasive, I agree with his sentiment. Cheating by sandbagging is not acceptable behavior, whether or not everyone else is doing it. If it's the only way to compete, find another group to compete with. I'm sure each of the guys you complained about in your original post has some excuse why he has to inflate his handicap. If your answer is to join them, then it's time to stop complaining about their behavior.

[Lefty-Golfer]

if the system is used honestly it works. typically at my club at least nobody thinks they have the advantage, low guys think they have no chance, high guys think they have to shoot much better then average to win and both are sure the other guy has the better of it. that being said it must be pretty damn correct if nobody really is happy about it.

[Fourputt]

if the system is used honestly it works. typically at my club at least nobody thinks they have the advantage, low guys think they have no chance, high guys think they have to shoot much better then average to win and both are sure the other guy has the better of it. that being said it must be pretty damn correct if nobody really is happy about it.

Excellent analysis!

The system works when it's used as it's designed to work. It only fails when it's stretched beyond its design, or is deliberately abused. Unflighted stroke play competitions are outside of the USGA system's design parameters.