World Handicap System Now Out (2020)

[RFKFREAK]

I like the idea of a worldwide HC system even though I'm not likely to ever partake in a situation where it might be useful.

I really like the idea of the rating being changed based on the scoring of the day.

[Pretzel]

I like this change, but I'm uncertain about how the daily rating will be calculated. It's a great idea (since tournaments usually play under tougher conditions than the rating would lead you to believe), but I'm not sure on how they plan to implement it at courses that don't have a dedicated daily player base. Even with courses that have a dedicated daily player base I'm not certain you can truly account for the variance that a golfer will score on any given day, regardless of course conditions.

Best I could see happening effectively would be a "competition ration" and a "normal rating" where they rate the course set up for competitions and for daily play, then use the appropriate handicap based on the course setup for the day. Maybe something could even be as complex as a sliding scale based on the stimp of the greens that day and a rating of the pin location difficulties (rate each pin location on each hole, then total the ratings for each hole for the day to get a grand total and the rating adjustment). I just see it as a difficult problem to solve there.

[DutchGolf]

I do not read anything about the handicap system in continental Europe (EGA), does that mean they are not included in the plans?

Besides this, I think it is good to have an universal handicap system, it make it easier to compare your score if you play abroad. However, would be nice to have some more money to try that

[RandallT]

4 hours ago, Pretzel said:

I like this change, but I'm uncertain about how the daily rating will be calculated. It's a great idea (since tournaments usually play under tougher conditions than the rating would lead you to believe), but I'm not sure on how they plan to implement it at courses that don't have a dedicated daily player base. Even with courses that have a dedicated daily player base I'm not certain you can truly account for the variance that a golfer will score on any given day, regardless of course conditions.

Best I could see happening effectively would be a "competition ration" and a "normal rating" where they rate the course set up for competitions and for daily play, then use the appropriate handicap based on the course setup for the day. Maybe something could even be as complex as a sliding scale based on the stimp of the greens that day and a rating of the pin location difficulties (rate each pin location on each hole, then total the ratings for each hole for the day to get a grand total and the rating adjustment). I just see it as a difficult problem to solve there.

I was thinking on similar lines. I'd think there's a randomness in scores to some degree, particularly in small sample sizes. The current system just gives an overall baseline. I realize I'm one of those guys who always brings up problems with a new plan, but then I get onboard with progress and try to make it work. With technology and stats, I suppose we will be able to instantly rate courses, in effect, based on knowledge of how people typically play to how they played that day, and the deviations work themselves out.

One other thing is that we'd no longer be able to know for certain after a round how it impacts our handicap. Like during an election, we'd have to wait until all the returns are in. That could take days, right? If other really good scores come in from similar players on the same tees, then your handicap would then get negatively impacted because the course rating for that day gets easier, however slightly. Could you achieve your 9.9 handicap one day, and then more scores get posted, bump you back to 10.0?

Also, now vanity handicappers will no longer impact just their own handicaps- they'll make everyone else's handicaps worse if they post lower scores than they really shot. Think of the angry threads on golf forums worldwide. 

[No Mulligans]

I wonder what will happen when only a few scores are posted on a course for the day.  I.e. the sample size is small enough that any kind of extrapolation would be invalid.

Edit: Oops, Pretzel made the same point above.

Edited November 24, 2015 by No Mulligans

[iacas]

12 hours ago, RickK said:

WOW, that was in 2012.  Seems they have been thinking about this for quite a long time with no action scheduled till 2018. 

It doesn't strike was something you can just start doing right away. Look at Australia - they're a smaller (relatively) place and it's taken them years and years to get courses rated. I imagine that even if this does take place in 2018, there will still be courses in the UK alone that take a few years to get fully on board.

12 hours ago, David in FL said:

Interesting.  I'm not 100% sure that the daily rating doesn't add some unnecessary complexity.  

It's not too complex for a computer.

10 hours ago, RFKFREAK said:

I like the idea of a worldwide HC system even though I'm not likely to ever partake in a situation where it might be useful.

If you mean a tournament, sure, but you use it every time you play golf if you keep and maintain a handicap. And now you can directly compare your handicap to everyone else's in the world.

10 hours ago, Pretzel said:

I like this change, but I'm uncertain about how the daily rating will be calculated. It's a great idea (since tournaments usually play under tougher conditions than the rating would lead you to believe), but I'm not sure on how they plan to implement it at courses that don't have a dedicated daily player base. Even with courses that have a dedicated daily player base I'm not certain you can truly account for the variance that a golfer will score on any given day, regardless of course conditions.

I imagine that if the minimum number of participants is not reached, the number stays as measured by the golf association… though that number might not have to be that high. Perhaps as few as 20 to 30 rounds could shift the number?

I'm sure, particularly given historical data to use as a model, the USGA (etc.) can derive formulas that account for the usual scattering of scores. And days where everyone just happens to shoot their high score will be balanced by days when everyone just happens to shoot their low score, regardless of the course conditions.

I think you can account for it. Plus, it's not like the course rating is going to change five strokes. I think this adjusts in smaller increments unless warranted (i.e. a hell day tournament drives everyone's scores up by five+, etc.).

10 hours ago, Pretzel said:

Best I could see happening effectively would be a "competition ration" and a "normal rating" where they rate the course set up for competitions and for daily play, then use the appropriate handicap based on the course setup for the day. Maybe something could even be as complex as a sliding scale based on the stimp of the greens that day and a rating of the pin location difficulties (rate each pin location on each hole, then total the ratings for each hole for the day to get a grand total and the rating adjustment). I just see it as a difficult problem to solve there.

I disagree that's best. There are days when the course plays to a 71.4 and days when it's more like a 71.1.

Given that paragraph I have to wonder if you're not thinking like you usually do in these kinds of areas, or if I'm not being clear.

I made up what I'll call an extreme case. I "set" the course rating and slope at 71.6 and 124 for the blue day, and the green day (heh heh) is a tougher day - call it a tournament, high winds, whatever. I plotted 21 scores from 0 to 20 handicappers (right on the dot) that happens to work out to a slope of 124.

This is kind of what you'd expect to see on a normal day. (Really, since about half of the dots are below the line, this graph shows about 50% of the rounds beating the handicap, but honestly I don't know how to plot 42 points and tell Numbers to ignore the higher of the two at each handicap index so that the trend line isn't shoved up higher too.)

The green day, you can see, follows a similarly sloped trend line, but the course rating shakes out to about 2.5 strokes more difficult.

When you overlap the two graphs:

So, with even 21 scores, I think you can start to see how they'll begin to assess rounds.

I kept slope the same in both graphs (close to the same anyway), and maybe the USGA already knows that slope narrows or broadens at one end or the other.

It would not be difficult to write an algorithm that:

• Plots the day's scores related to the player's up-to-the-minute handicap index.
• Throws out any scores which are too far away from the established line (slope).

Every time a score is entered for that day, the day's rating is adjusted slightly. If four scores are returned, I don't know that it would move very much at all even if everyone shot eight strokes higher than usual… but if 100 scores are returned and everyone shot six strokes higher, on average, it might move four or five strokes that day.

6 hours ago, DutchGolf said:

I do not read anything about the handicap system in continental Europe (EGA), does that mean they are not included in the plans?

I think it's going to be worldwide. I don't know what system EGA uses, or Korea, or Japan… but AFAIK this is literally a worldwide system, as in all golf associations are on board.

5 hours ago, RandallT said:

I was thinking on similar lines. I'd think there's a randomness in scores to some degree, particularly in small sample sizes. The current system just gives an overall baseline. I realize I'm one of those guys who always brings up problems with a new plan, but then I get onboard with progress and try to make it work. With technology and stats, I suppose we will be able to instantly rate courses, in effect, based on knowledge of how people typically play to how they played that day, and the deviations work themselves out.

I think it will be fine, and I think you can account for "small sample sizes" by simply not moving the number very much.

Heck, if you define the number of "valid scores" (VS) (i.e. scores close enough to the new line to count, which should rule out people that had a horrible day PLUS bad weather or vice versa) you could always just do a weighted average, something like:

Daily Course Rating = (Standard Course Rating * (100-VS)/100) + (Calculated Course Rating * VS/100).

So if you had 50 valid scores, and SCR of 71.6 and a CCR of 74.2, the DCR would be halfway between the two: 72.9. After all, you had 100 scores showing the course played to a 74.2 that day. I don't know that adjusting it to 72.9 is all that bad. Maybe it's not enough.

5 hours ago, RandallT said:

One other thing is that we'd no longer be able to know for certain after a round how it impacts our handicap. Like during an election, we'd have to wait until all the returns are in. That could take days, right? If other really good scores come in from similar players on the same tees, then your handicap would then get negatively impacted because the course rating for that day gets easier, however slightly. Could you achieve your 9.9 handicap one day, and then more scores get posted, bump you back to 10.0?

Yes, I assume so. Unless there's a mandate to enter scores in on the day they're entered, or within 1 day or something, you might end up waiting a week before you can surely say what your score is.

But then again, maybe this is worrying about very little. No, if you play in the morning, you won't have a great idea, but if 95% of the scores are posted at the end of the round, you can be pretty certain how your score that day will affect your handicap before you go to bed that night.

5 hours ago, RandallT said:

Also, now vanity handicappers will no longer impact just their own handicaps- they'll make everyone else's handicaps worse if they post lower scores than they really shot. Think of the angry threads on golf forums worldwide. 

I don't know about that, because they've already established their vanity handicap. So if a 6.8 index shoots an 81 on a tough day while everyone else shoots higher as well, his score goes up a similar amount. Really, yeah, the guy shot 87 or whatever, but whether he gets to a vanity handicap by not counting strokes or not counting the three balls he hit OB, he's likely to keep score the same as he always has, and thus, continue to shoot the same scores as he always has.

And in a tournament when people count his actual scores and he shoots 88, his differential is likely to be thrown out as being an aberration so even then it won't artificially change the differentials of others that day.

P.S. I don't think vanity handicapping is a very big issue, and on top of that, I think most vanity handicaps are simply from people not following the Rules and counting all penalties, etc.

31 minutes ago, No Mulligans said:

I wonder what will happen when only a few scores are posted on a course for the day.  I.e. the sample size is small enough that any kind of extrapolation would be invalid.

I imagine they'll just say "too few to be valid… use the established course rating that day." If that happens to be in the "bad" 10 of 20 for all eleven players that day, so be it.

[bkuehn1952]

I see the "SSS" adjustment being made more often at private clubs.  There are some courses where I play that my guess is that fewer than 5% of the players maintain a handicap.  Most private courses that I have seen, enroll every member in the handicap system.  That would tend to greatly increase the number of scores returned on any given day.

Has anyone had significant experience with "SSS" adjustments?  How much could a course rating be adjusted?  What is typical?  If a course rated as 72.0 had a day where everyone was 5 shots higher than one might predict for a random "normal" day, would the rating rise to 72.5, 73.0 or possibly 77.0?

[rkim291968]

Imagine, no more arguing over which handicap system is better than the other.

[newtogolf]

I like the changes for 2018, I always felt our handicap system was too lenient given the way it's managed overseas.

[natureboy]

6 hours ago, RandallT said:

I was thinking on similar lines. I'd think there's a randomness in scores to some degree, particularly in small sample sizes. The current system just gives an overall baseline. I realize I'm one of those guys who always brings up problems with a new plan, but then I get onboard with progress and try to make it work. With technology and stats, I suppose we will be able to instantly rate courses, in effect, based on knowledge of how people typically play to how they played that day, and the deviations work themselves out.

One other thing is that we'd no longer be able to know for certain after a round how it impacts our handicap. Like during an election, we'd have to wait until all the returns are in. That could take days, right? If other really good scores come in from similar players on the same tees, then your handicap would then get negatively impacted because the course rating for that day gets easier, however slightly. Could you achieve your 9.9 handicap one day, and then more scores get posted, bump you back to 10.0?

Also, now vanity handicappers will no longer impact just their own handicaps- they'll make everyone else's handicaps worse if they post lower scores than they really shot. Think of the angry threads on golf forums worldwide. 

USGA is probably already tracking daily variances from the official rating and I expect they have an idea of how scores vary. They will only be adjusting a mean anyway so it shouldn't shift by much right? I expect this is to catch really big swings in course conditions like extra long rough and faster greens leading up to a tournament, or 20+ mph winds rather than just pin positions. Also, conditions vary hourly, let alone daily. Why not do time of day while they're at it to capture morning / afternoon conditions difference?

I had the same concern as you in the second paragraph, particularly if the daily rating is not made publicly available.

Edited November 24, 2015 by natureboy

[iacas]

21 minutes ago, natureboy said:

Why not do time of day while they're at it to capture morning / afternoon conditions difference?

Because that's just getting silly.

[RandallT]

24 minutes ago, natureboy said:

USGA is probably already tracking daily variances from the official rating and I expect they have an idea of how scores vary. They will only be adjusting a mean anyway so it shouldn't shift by much right? I expect this is to catch really big swings in course conditions like extra long rough and faster greens leading up to a tournament, or 20+ mph winds rather than just pin positions. Also, conditions vary hourly, let alone daily. Why not do time of day while they're at it to capture morning / afternoon conditions difference?

I had the same concern as you in the second paragraph, particularly if the daily rating is not made publicly available.

Yah the more I think about this whole change, I like it. Like you and Erik said above, I'll bet they've factored all that in, and it'll work.

Plus, it's all an improvement over what we do today when every day is considered the same, despite weather and pin/tee placements.

And, more math based on more data is good! 

From then on, I'll consider only playing on days where the morning is pristine conditions and I know the course will be crowded after me when the gail force winds come rolling in. . Or is that a new form of vanity cap?

1 hour ago, iacas said:

I don't know about that, because they've already established their vanity handicap. So if a 6.8 index shoots an 81 on a tough day while everyone else shoots higher as well, his score goes up a similar amount. Really, yeah, the guy shot 87 or whatever, but whether he gets to a vanity handicap by not counting strokes or not counting the three balls he hit OB, he's likely to keep score the same as he always has, and thus, continue to shoot the same scores as he always has.

Yes, I think this is already baked in to some degree. Probably a minor effect anyway, you're right. 

[natureboy]

7 minutes ago, RandallT said:

From then on, I'll consider only playing on days where the morning is pristine conditions and I know the course will be crowded after me when the gail force winds come rolling in. . Or is that a new form of vanity cap?

Already ahead of the curve. 

[turtleback]

14 hours ago, David in FL said:

Interesting.  I'm not 100% sure that the daily rating doesn't add some unnecessary complexity.  

Regardless though, I'm a huge fan of a unified system, as long as the overall execution is simple to drive as many participants as possible.

The daily rating is my main concern as well.  The big question is WHO does the daily rating and HOW standardized is it.  How involved is it?  How long does it take to determine the correct adjustment?

And an even bigger question is: how can they get compliance when we hear so many stories here about courses that really do not give a damn about doing things the right way (mis-marking, invalid local rules, non-enforcement of (their own) pace of play standards, etc.).  What makes them think courses will be more compliant in THIS area than they have historically been in these other areas?  Are the governing bodies going to audit courses to make sure they are determining their adjustments properly?

OTOH, I guess this kind of daily rating is already part of one of the systems (SSS?) so maybe they have already worked out those problems.  It will be interesting to see how it works out in detail, because the details is where the devil resides.

[natureboy]

20 minutes ago, turtleback said:

OTOH, I guess this kind of daily rating is already part of one of the systems (SSS?) so maybe they have already worked out those problems.  It will be interesting to see how it works out in detail, because the details is where the devil resides.

I think this is also similar in concept to how the PGA does adjusted scoring to account for different courses played or how Broadie adjusts strokes gained by the field average to account for better / worse scoring per course and playing conditions differences.

As far as the article, one interesting bit was the emphasis on the not every round need be scored for HCP idea. One reason I haven't registered for an official handicap is I don't want to have to enter a score every time I step on a course. I want to go out sometimes and 'mess about' playing practice rounds with more than one ball (if course is empty) to explore and get more comfortable hitting certain shots. Or if I'm in a rush, to just ignore keeping score altogether and get some on-course strokes in. It would be nice to have an official handicap while still being able to do that without having to estimate most likely score (for which the rules thread even seems to have some disagreement as to the correct method).

Edited November 24, 2015 by natureboy

[JoeSeaton]

I know it's really really really off topic and I'm so sorry but how do I get some of the TST alignment sticks thanks and sorry again I can't  find the answer anywhere 

[DrvFrShow]

Why don't I have much confidence in the system? Computers? They have to be maintained. The local information regarding conditions has to be entered daily. Bear in mind that customer service in this country sucks. I had my land line disconnected back on September 2 because all I was getting was telemarketers. Did you know my ISP still hasn't gotten my bill right? Three months. This month they threatened to cut off my internet service because I haven't paid my phone bill. I don't have a home phone. I have Verizon for my phone. Idiots! They apologized again for the third time and told me that they'd correct it and that I only owed $$ instead of $$$, and that it would take four days for the correction to show up. That was November 3. I checked Friday and it's still not corrected. I know this is OT but you get the point. Systems rely on people to maintain them. 

Will daily changing handicaps be any different on GHIN? In the United States? And enforcement? On public goat tracks? Are you kidding me?

It won't change vanity capping or sandbagging.

However, what I see as a big improvement is the uniformity between organizations. This isn't for us hackers. This is for the young amateurs who compete on a national and international level. There needs to be uniformity in the systems around the globe so that a 3 HC from Germany can come to the US and compete in the US Amateur and vice versa.

@natureboy You can do that now. You can go out on the course and mess around. No USGA official is looking over your shoulder. I've played 18 holes without a scorecard and just made notes. Who cares? Need bunker practice? Hit 3 or 4 balls out of the bunker next time you're in one if you're not being rushed. My pro told me to do that when I'm playing solo. Most driving ranges don't have practice bunkers or pitching areas unless you belong to a country club.

@RandallT You need to move to the SF Bay Area then. You'll have your calm pristine mornings and in the afternoons those 35 mph winds with the fog can come rolling in unannounced.

Edited November 24, 2015 by DrvFrShow

[rkim291968]

2 minutes ago, DrvFrShow said:

 

@RandallT You need to move to the SF Bay Area then. You'll have your calm pristine mornings and in the afternoons those 35 mph winds with the fog can come rolling in unannounced.

That's how it is with my course.  5 MPH in the morning, and 20 MPH in the afternoon.   Of course, holes on top of the hill, 20 MPH forecast means 30 MPH in reality.   I can lose 5 strokes easily on such windy day.   Bring on the new system, yeah!