Slope- Why not %

[boogielicious]

Originally Posted by MS256

I always thought it was because none of us could imagine Peter, Paul and Mary singing "500 Kilometers Away From Home".

Excellent!

[MEfree]

Who cares what is easier?  With calculators, both handheld and online, nobody does any actual math any more anyway, so it doesn't make any difference what numbers they use.  When entering scores, you enter either the total score or hole by hole score and the program or website does the figuring.  Same for  course handicap.  Much ado about nothing.

Lot's of truth here but to me it is harder to remember that 113 is the base.  i.e, if I didn't play golf for 10 years, I would probably have to look this up again, but if it was 100, I likely wouldn't forget it.  It is good to know generally what your handicap should be on a course without the use of a calculator as people can make mistakes with them.

Originally Posted by boogielicious

This is pretty much the reason the US did not switch to the metric system too.

I grew up with inches, yards and miles, but you have to admit that metric makes more sense and is easier to learn for someone who is not familiar with either system.  I would bet there are lots more Europeans who could tell you how many meters there are in 1.6 kilometers than Americans who could tell you how many yards there are in a mile- even with the use of a calculator.

[luu5]

Originally Posted by MEfree

Lot's of truth here but to me it is harder to remember that 113 is the base.  i.e, if I didn't play golf for 10 years, I would probably have to look this up again, but if it was 100, I likely wouldn't forget it.  It is good to know generally what your handicap should be on a course without the use of a calculator as people can make mistakes with them.

If person knows his exact handicap and cares about it, I would imagine him knowing how to compute playing handicap. On another note, here we have in the club houses and at the first tee a sheet where you can quickly find out your playing handicap. So you do not have to calculate anything if you do not want to. Also on every golf course web page they have HC calculator where you enter your exact HC and out comes playing HC for each tee and gender. Easy peasy. And we use slope+CR, not just slope to calculate playing HC, how complex is that?!

[MEfree]

Originally Posted by luu5

If person knows his exact handicap and cares about it, I would imagine him knowing how to compute playing handicap. On another note, here we have in the club houses and at the first tee a sheet where you can quickly find out your playing handicap. So you do not have to calculate anything if you do not want to. Also on every golf course web page they have HC calculator where you enter your exact HC and out comes playing HC for each tee and gender. Easy peasy. And we use slope+CR, not just slope to calculate playing HC, how complex is that?!

It is easy peasy for me to calculate also, but I am really good at math.

I have played at courses that have a index chart to CH chart posted for each set of tees, BUT one of the ones I play at currently only has a single ipad available to look up your CH if you don't know it.  For men's league, this course simply rounds index to get everyone's "handicap"  This worked fine last season when everyone was playing the 113 slope blue tees, but this year the have the low index players off the 117 gold, the middle guys off the 113 blue and the high index guys off the 103 whites.  I have tried to convince them that they need to 1, calculate everyone's CH using slope and 2, adjust for the 2-4 stroke CR difference between tees, but this has fallen on deaf ears so far.  This results in the guys on the whites getting a 5-7 stroke HC advantage from where they should be.

To be fair, the guy who took over running the league a week or two before I joined has said that he would consider it for next season, but thought it would be to hard to change mid-season...apparently not so easy peasy for everyone.

[Fourputt]

Originally Posted by MEfree

Quote:

Originally Posted by iacas

I will admit that it's somewhat amusing that you think that despite the well known published value of 113, and the fact that virtually EVERY course in their area will be more difficult in obvious ways, you think that there was some grand scheme to obscure and confuse golfers, particularly when that course is quite likely to have a much lower course rating. You don't see too many 74.2/105 courses.

This is just conjecture piled on top of what is quite literally a pointless discussion. I'm still done.

I was hoping to get a simple answer when I started the thread, but nobody came up with one that seemed correct- most seemed like conjecture to me.  I will admit that my thought there was a "grand scheme to obscure and confuse golfers" (your words) is also conjecture.  the real answer could be that it didn't occur to the originators how easy it would be to have the "average" be 100 instead of 113.  Alternatively, maybe they based it on some existing system or ....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fourputt

Who cares what is easier?  With calculators, both handheld and online, nobody does any actual math any more anyway, so it doesn't make any difference what numbers they use.  When entering scores, you enter either the total score or hole by hole score and the program or website does the figuring.  Same for  course handicap.  Much ado about nothing.

Lot's of truth here but to me it is harder to remember that 113 is the base.  i.e, if I didn't play golf for 10 years, I would probably have to look this up again, but if it was 100, I likely wouldn't forget it.  It is good to know generally what your handicap should be on a course without the use of a calculator as people can make mistakes with them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by boogielicious

This is pretty much the reason the US did not switch to the metric system too.

I grew up with inches, yards and miles, but you have to admit that metric makes more sense and is easier to learn for someone who is not familiar with either system.  I would bet there are lots more Europeans who could tell you how many meters there are in 1.6 kilometers than Americans who could tell you how many yards there are in a mile- even with the use of a calculator.

I think that it's a European plot.  Since kilometers are a smaller unit of measure, and since European countries are all fairly small, by using metric it sounds like the distances are greater and therefore the country seems bigger.   Instead of only 100 miles from here to there, it's a whopping 161 km.

(for anyone who didn't get the smartass smiley, that's a joke)

[MEfree]

The Pope of Slope website gives an explanation of how 113 is derived from a different point of view compared to the USGA site.  It says that the average slope is 1.13 which is multiplied by 100 to make it a round number.  My thinking is that they could have multiplied all slopes by 88.5 (or 88.49558) to make it a round number with the average being 100.

http://www.popeofslope.com/courserating/twoparameter.html

3. Slope Rating

The USGA coined the term which numerically describes the difference in course rating difficulty between bogey and scratch players as the "Slope Rating," which is a second dimension in handicapping. Slope Rating is the slope of a regession line of total score versus USGA Handicap for a particular golf course. The Y-intercept is the USGA Course Rating which is the better half score average of scratch golfers. The slope of the scores line of an average course has been observed to be 1.13 and USGA Slope Rating is referenced as 113 to deal in whole numbers.

[Phil McGleno]

That would still be an extra step as people told you already and you still have not told anyone why you continue to annoy with questions like this-The basic question is WHY CONVERT TO 100 there is simply no need to do so. Pointless-But you cant let go you just get stuck on this. ENough dude go get laid or something.[quote name="MEfree" url="/t/69094/slope-why-not/18#post_880950"]The Pope of Slope website gives an explanation of how 113 is derived from a different point of view compared to the USGA site.  It says that the average slope is 1.13 which is multiplied by 100 to make it a round number.  My thinking is that they could have multiplied all slopes by 88.5 (or 88.49558) to make it a round number with the average being 100. [/quote]

[MEfree]

Originally Posted by Phil McGleno

That would still be an extra step as people told you already and you still have not told anyone why you continue to annoy with questions like this-The basic question is WHY CONVERT TO 100 there is simply no need to do so. Pointless-But you cant let go you just get stuck on this. ENough dude go get laid or something.

Not an extra step- it is the same number of steps to convert 1.13 to 113 as it is to convert 1.13 to 100 (both of which would be done by the USGA) and it is easier for the average person to divide by 100 rather than 113.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by MEfree

Not an extra step- it is the same number of steps to convert 1.13 to 113 as it is to convert 1.13 to 100 (both of which would be done by the USGA) and it is easier for the average person to divide by 100 rather than 113.

Oh brother. Dividing by 100 is irrelevant when they then have to multiply a decimal number by something like 1.17 or 0.93 or something.

Either way you slice it the formula works out to some decimal number ( whether your index or the score - CR or something) x some number, which is quite likely to be something greater or less than 1.0, whether either the denominator or numerator is 100 or 113.

Really done now.