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Playing a Round of Golf Solo


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4 minutes ago, iacas said:

Beyond that, yes, you're supposed to stick with the format you decided upon first. If you're playing a practice round, don't make it a real round because you birdie two of the first four holes. If you're screwing up, don't turn it into a practice round.

This may be partially the reason the USGA is not allowing solo rounds to be applied towards handicap.  

Joe Paradiso

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2 hours ago, newtogolf said:

This may be partially the reason the USGA is not allowing solo rounds to be applied towards handicap.  

There are many reasons why a handicap is not quite as "solid" when playing alone. It's not always because someone is cheating or the opposite which is vanity capping as noted.

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Still going on about this? It sounds pretty simple to me. You want to play a solo round by the RoG, go ahead. Just remember that if you hit your ball in a "questionable" place, you'd probably better hit a provisional just to make sure you have one in play, and if you blow that one out, you should hit another provisional just to make sure - don't forget to count all the strokes and it would be advisable to make note of the number on the ball as well so you know which one is your original and which one was the first or second provisional in such a case. Make sure you measure properly when you make your drops. And remember that even though you may have shot your career best (or career worst) you cannot report it, regardless of what the people in the office tell you.

If you hook up with some people and play say 7 holes on one 9 with them you can report those 7 holes and mark the other two holes for that 9 as par + HC.

It's that simple. When you're keeping an official handicap you follow the rules you agreed upon with your organization.

If you want to practice in your solo round.... practice. It doesn't matter. You can't report it anyway. You might as well because you don't see those lies or get to hit on grass as often unless your course has a grass driving range which most do not, and even then you don't get the uneven lies.

One of the reasons why handicaps are not as solid as when playing alone is that when you're playing alone nothing is at stake. Of course i've played with guys who make me feel like nothing is at stake, too, and shot my best 9 holes simply because they were hacks like me.

 

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At a party on Saturday, I was talking with a friend about this issue.  He didn't like the change in the rule, and mentioned he usually played better when the played alone.  I asked him, when you compete, you play with someone else, shouldn't your handicap be based on playing with someone else?  He thought for a minute, and realized he'd be screwing himself if he posted those solo rounds, beyond just breaking the rules.  Duh!

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49 minutes ago, DaveP043 said:

At a party on Saturday, I was talking with a friend about this issue.  He didn't like the change in the rule, and mentioned he usually played better when the played alone.  I asked him, when you compete, you play with someone else, shouldn't your handicap be based on playing with someone else?  He thought for a minute, and realized he'd be screwing himself if he posted those solo rounds, beyond just breaking the rules.  Duh!

It's funny how people get so caught up in lowering their handicap that they forget their lower handicap works against them in competition.  

Joe Paradiso

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I noticed that high handicaps are concerned with vanity capping more than the lower handicaps. This is very strange because it seems like higher handicaps should benefit more from their peers doing the vanity capping. :-P

The main reason I follow the rule is because it's that, one of the many ROG you are trying to follow, and this rule is like low hanging fruit, it's so easy to follow you don't have to even try.

 

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2 minutes ago, Lihu said:

I noticed that high handicaps are concerned with vanity capping more than the lower handicaps. This is very strange because it seems like higher handicaps should benefit more from sand bagging :-P

The only reason I follow to rule is because it's that, one of the many ROG you are trying to follow. This rule is like low hanging fruit, it's so easy to follow you don't have to even try.

 

It depends on what you consider high handicaps.  I  know a number of vanity cappers that have -9 - -15 handicaps.  My earlier point is that vanity cappers don't consider competition in their management of their handicap they only consider that they are telling their friends and fellow golfers what their handicap is. 

In my old club you couldn't get into games on weekends with the "cool" members unless your handicap was 15 or lower, as a result there was a large group of members that lost a lot of money every weekend because their vanity caps killed them in money games.  

Joe Paradiso

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3 minutes ago, newtogolf said:

It depends on what you consider high handicaps.  I  know a number of vanity cappers that have -9 - -15 handicaps.  My earlier point is that vanity cappers don't consider competition in their management of their handicap they only consider that they are telling their friends and fellow golfers what their handicap is. 

In my old club you couldn't get into games on weekends with the "cool" members unless your handicap was 15 or lower, as a result there was a large group of members that lost a lot of money every weekend because their vanity caps killed them in money games.  

They may not really care about losing money as long as they get to play. I can speak from experience when I say it can be a bit frustrating and/or annoying to be excluded for not being good enough. At the same time, I can understand when better players don't want to have to put up with someone hacking their way around the course. I've never much cared how good or bad someone I'm playing with is, because I enjoy having someone to talk to as I play. However, I can see how if the round being played is "serious" that having someone playing super poorly could be a distraction.

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Most of the people in the mid handicap range would rather not give up ant strokes, so it's very curious that the range is 9-15?

Unless you are saying that they are 15 and list their handicap as a 9? Yeah, that's dumb. :-D

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9 minutes ago, Jeremie Boop said:

They may not really care about losing money as long as they get to play. I can speak from experience when I say it can be a bit frustrating and/or annoying to be excluded for not being good enough. At the same time, I can understand when better players don't want to have to put up with someone hacking their way around the course. I've never much cared how good or bad someone I'm playing with is, because I enjoy having someone to talk to as I play. However, I can see how if the round being played is "serious" that having someone playing super poorly could be a distraction.

I can see both sides of it but in the end your game has to back up your handicap or they label you a cheater or vanity capper.  

8 minutes ago, Lihu said:

Most of the people in the mid handicap range would rather not give up ant strokes, so it's very curious that the range is 9-15?

Unless you are saying that they are 15 and list their handicap as a 9? Yeah, that's dumb. :-D

Nope, guys that were -9 were probably -15 and guys that were -15 were closer to -20.  It wasn't about the strokes, it was about having a handicap you could brag about and that could get you into money games with the "cool" members.  

Joe Paradiso

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3 minutes ago, newtogolf said:

I can see both sides of it but in the end your game has to back up your handicap or they label you a cheater or vanity capper.  

Yeah, which is why I don't see the point in having a handicap that's not accurate. Most times when I play with someone they tend to not believe my handicap is as high as it is, until they see one of my "blow up" holes where everything goes to hell in a handbasket or they see me duff a few 50-70 yard shots. Thankfully those blow up holes are becoming less and less frequent these days, but the duffed 50-70 yard shots are still getting me. I'm looking forward to when I'm comfortable enough with my abilities to maybe try to join the skins games on the weekends at my favorite course here. The only thing I worry about is I heard they play "preferred lies" or something all the time where they can roll the ball out of bad spots... I mean, what's the point of that?

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On 5/18/2016 at 1:46 PM, DaveP043 said:

Its a good thing to ask, to understand the job that the Committee is supposed to do.  It's tough enough without having to deal with otherwise honest players who are in rebellion over the change in the rules.  I'd suggest making their job as easy as you can.

@DaveP043 & @Lihu after speaking with my club pro he told me we do not have a handicap committee, and that handicap decisions were made among the 4 pros on staff. Also, I told him about my 90 on lunch by myself and he said he could delete that score from GHIN since it no longer allowed. I'm OK with that.

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28 minutes ago, newtogolf said:

It wasn't about the strokes, it was about having a handicap you could brag about and that could get you into money games with the "cool" members.  

That's just a pride thing, it shouldn't really bother you if someone wants to look cool and lose money. Unless, everyone is vanity capping to play those cool money games?

I was just talking to a "bogey" golfer who won 15 skins in one match up, and I was thinking "sand bagger" during the rest of the conversation.Then later on thinking about it, it's possible he was playing 30 handicaps who said they were bogey? IDK, but I'm planning on playing him next month some time. For the record, I told him I was also "bogey" after hearing about the 15 skins. I might fuss up at the turn, or both of us might. :-P

Regardless, it shouldn't matter to an actual bogey like yourself. You could easily take their money being given 6 strokes to a "15 handicap". :-)

The real issue is if everyone is a vanity cap then start accusing the legitimate handicaps of sand bagging as @bkuehn1952 blogged about in his "The end of Sand Bagging" blog.

 

16 minutes ago, kpaulhus said:

@DaveP043 & @Lihu after speaking with my club pro he told me we do not have a handicap committee, and that handicap decisions were made among the 4 pros on staff. Also, I told him about my 90 on lunch by myself and he said he could delete that score from GHIN since it no longer allowed. I'm OK with that.

Cool.

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17 hours ago, boil3rmak3r said:

I could be wrong (and I'm sure the rules gurus on this thread will correct me if I am), but you are'nt supposed to start a  round intending for it to count and decide later it's null and void.  I understand you want to play fast, but you have to be realistic as a single.  It sounds like you quite often abandon a round you intended to be official because the pace of play was not up to your standards.  

I hope the rules guys can confirm or debunk this, but I think what you do isagainst the ROG...

IIn 2015 I signed 82 rounds in Game Golf. Less than that posted to GHIN because we are Mar-Nov here. In this instance I went after work starting at 6:19 PM so I knew despite intentions that I may not finish. But no I don't abandon rounds often. This was not intended or common. 

 

 

Dave :-)

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29 minutes ago, kpaulhus said:

@DaveP043 & @Lihu after speaking with my club pro he told me we do not have a handicap committee, and that handicap decisions were made among the 4 pros on staff. Also, I told him about my 90 on lunch by myself and he said he could delete that score from GHIN since it no longer allowed. I'm OK with that.

http://www.usga.org/Handicapping/publications-25483/responsibilities-at-a-glance-23c19d10.html

http://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/Handicapping/handicap-manual.html#!decision-14385

Etc.

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47 minutes ago, kpaulhus said:

@DaveP043 & @Lihu after speaking with my club pro he told me we do not have a handicap committee, and that handicap decisions were made among the 4 pros on staff. 

I think this is pretty common, but its not the right way to do things.

17 minutes ago, iacas said:

I'm going to echo @iacas, a Handicap Committee is a requirement of the USGA Handicap System.  The Chair of that Committee can NOT be an employee of the club.  This is supposed to be peer review, not club management oversight.  As the decisions in Erik's second link say, a paid employee of the Club undoubtedly has divided loyalties, between doing what the handicap rules require, and pleasing the club members.  @kpaulhus, you may want to talk to some other members and see if there's interest in forming a committee, and doing things properly.

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My club was in a similar situation until this year.  Over the winter, a number of us volunteered to take on the Committee responsibility, and I'm now the Handicap chair.  We're dealing with a relatively long-term lack of enforcement, trying to break some old (bad) habits.  We've certainly raised a few waves, and a few of our long term members resent the idea that someone is actually checking up on them, but they're changing gradually.  Perhaps surprisingly, the most vehement complaints came from some of the best players.  You can perhaps understand why I have little patience for those who knowingly choose to post improperly.  I also have limited patience for those who complain about sandbaggers, or other handicap issues, but don't care enough to actually volunteer and try to make things better.  Heck, lots of them don't care enough to actually try to learn about the handicap system, they just want to complain.

 

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29 minutes ago, DaveP043 said:

My club was in a similar situation until this year.  Over the winter, a number of us volunteered to take on the Committee responsibility, and I'm now the Handicap chair.  We're dealing with a relatively long-term lack of enforcement, trying to break some old (bad) habits.  We've certainly raised a few waves, and a few of our long term members resent the idea that someone is actually checking up on them, but they're changing gradually.

This is pretty cool of you to take on this responsibility. The most hated positions at any club, I think.

 

Quote

Perhaps surprisingly, the most vehement complaints came from some of the best players.

Why is this surprising?

 

Quote

You can perhaps understand why I have little patience for those who knowingly choose to post improperly.

You're really serious about this and that's very good. I suppose it's easy to tell when a wayward score or round is posted improperly, but how do you tell when a score that looks reasonable was posted improperly?

 

Quote

I also have limited patience for those who complain about sandbaggers, or other handicap issues, but don't care enough to actually volunteer and try to make things better.  Heck, lots of them don't care enough to actually try to learn about the handicap system, they just want to complain.

This is kind of why it's kind of a hated position, and I'm glad to hear you are taking it seriously.

Our club handicap chairman is more relaxed but no less serious about it, he just tells everyone to post every valid round and put down what they shoot no matter what the conditions while abiding by all the rules that they know. His stance is that as you get better or worse, your scores will more accurately reflect your scoring potential. He does not like practice rounds at all, just post everything.

Coincidentally, at the same time this new rule came in effect. The Brookside men's, lady's and player's club golfers are out there in big numbers along with the usual crowd of golfers, and there is pretty much no way you can play alone even if you tried. All 36 holes are pretty much populated. So, at my home course, pretty much nothing has changed with the new rule. There's just a lot of golfers.

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1 hour ago, Lihu said:

That's just a pride thing, it shouldn't really bother you if someone wants to look cool and lose money. Unless, everyone is vanity capping to play those cool money games?

I never said it bothered me, I was trying to help explain the mentality.  It's easier to vanity cap as a single (the topic of this thread) unless your playing partners are vanity cappers too and you all enable each other.

Joe Paradiso

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Note: This thread is 2746 days old. We appreciate that you found this thread instead of starting a new one, but if you plan to post here please make sure it's still relevant. If not, please start a new topic. Thank you!

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