Handicaps just don't work for match play

[iacas]

You need to divide your players into "flights" so that 25-30 index players don't play 8-15 players.

My league did that... and then the "#1" player on the other team would get subbed for by a 22-handicap, and I'd end up giving a guy eight shots on nine holes anyway. And then he'd shoot 44.

[wachesawgolfer]

Handicaps are only as good as they guy who is posting his score. If you get someone who is not always honest and forgets to post his better scores his number will be inflated. This can also happen if he is not using equitable stroke control. Depending on his handicap, he can only post a certain score on a hole. I don't have the chart, but I believe as a 17 I can only post a double. I can still play the hole out for head to head purposes, but the worst I can report is a double.

Actually for a 17, 7 is the most you can take on any hole. Double is for 9 or less.

[Jeepthrills]

Actually for a 17, 7 is the most you can take on any hole. Double is for 9 or less.

I don't know why I put double. I knew that it was 7. Momentary brain freeze.

[Leek]

Actually, the way the USGA has handicapping set up, the lower handicapper has the advantage. For every eight stroke differential, the higher handicapper loses a stroke.

[iacas]

Actually, the way the USGA has handicapping set up, the lower handicapper has the advantage. For every eight stroke differential, the higher handicapper loses a stroke.

How do you figure?

[Leek]

How do you figure?

The USGA has always worked everyting around scratch. First of all, course rating is what the USGA expects a scratch player to shoot. Slope does not enter into handicap computation. It is only used for portability. The USGA accepts the 10 best of your last 20 scores, minus course rating. Then that number is multiplied by .96, and then averaged. That computation penalizes the high handicappers to the tune of one shot per 8 handicap strokes. Both of those favor the low handicapper.

[Reefer_Madness]

Pretty interesting stuff Leek, I've always been in the dark when it comes to handicapps and course rating etc, and how they are calculated.

I'm playing in my first match play tourney next week, should be a lot of fun.

[billybaroo]

Disagree...
Slope is used to determine the differentials.... which end up determining your hadicap

Formula is
(Score - Course Rating) x 113 / Slope Rating

Then everything that you said....(10 best differentials/10) * .96
Slope is definitely used !

[iacas]

The USGA has always worked everyting around scratch. First of all, course rating is what the USGA expects a scratch player to shoot. Slope does not enter into handicap computation. It is only used for portability.

Slope does factor into handicap ratings. Unless you manage to shoot 71.4 somehow (or whatever your course rating is), slope is applied.

The USGA accepts the 10 best of your last 20 scores, minus course rating. Then that number is multiplied by .96, and then averaged.

You're missing the step where you multiply by 113 and divide by the slope.

http://www.usga.org/playing/handicap...ection_10.html

That computation penalizes the high handicappers to the tune of one shot per 8 handicap strokes. Both of those favor the low handicapper.

That math doesn't work out. 0.04 * 8 is nowhere near 1. It's 0.32 (of course). It's 0.04 for everyone.

So we'll take a course that's rated 72/113 for simplicity. A scratch golfer shoots 72 and has a 0 handicap. A 36-handicapper shoots 108 and his course handicap is 35 (and his index is 34.56). He loses one shot for 36 strokes.

[Leek]

Slope does factor into handicap ratings. Unless you manage to shoot 71.4 somehow (or whatever your course rating is), slope is applied.

Understood. The entire formula is what creates the advantage. The .96 adds to it. In the 90s the USGA determined that a scratch player will average 9 less shots per round than an 8 handicap. Remember, handicap is not an indication of your average score, but an indication of how you will play at your best. From the USGA handicapping manual, " Bonus for Excellence is the incentive for players to improve their golf games that is built into the USGA Handicap System. It is the term used to describe the small percentage below perfect equity that is used to calculate a Handicap Index (96 percent). As a Handicap Index improves (gets lower), the player has a slightly better chance of placing high or winning a handicap event."

[iacas]

Understood. The entire formula is what creates the advantage. The .96 adds to it.

8 * 0.04 = 0.32.

In the 90s the USGA determined that a scratch player will average 9 less shots per round than an 8 handicap. Remember, handicap is not an indication of your average score, but an indication of how you will play at your best.

I know it's more a measure of potential than your average. I'm a 2.6 - I know how handicaps are calculated, have written software that calculates it, and know enough to know that slope factors into it, too.

Please start a new thread and provide a source for what you seem to remember the USGA said in the 1990s. Otherwise, I'm going to go with what I've experienced versus what you seem to recall.

As a Handicap Index improves (gets lower), the player has a slightly better chance of placing high or winning a handicap event."

"slightly better chance" does not necessariliy mean "one shot for every eight strokes." The math doesn't bear that out. One shot for every 13, yes - that's 0.52. Every eight, no.

Furthermore, the quoted part (and this whole side discussion) has nothing to do with match play, which is the topic here.

[TD22057]

I realize it doesn't apply to the tournament conditions many of you describe but we use a "modified handicap" system when my friends and I play. A good friend of mine is scratch and I was about an 18 at the beginning of the year (down to a 12 now). We'd play skins using our official handicaps but in a per-hole scoring system (skins), the scratch player gets crushed almost everytime since I was about equally likely to shoot a par or a double bogey. We fixed this by giving out a skin to anyone who hits the green in regulation and makes par or better. Seems to have even things up well for us and made the match much more competitive.

If we were just looking at total score, handicaps would have favored the better player as the USGA intends. But a skins game favors the more inconsistent player when you get strokes.