Golf World Ranking for Average Golfers

[Wornout1iron]

Hi there everyone, 

Hopefully, it is ok to post this here. If not, please let me know.

I am looking for some feedback on a fun golf side project called Golf World Rankings. Basically, it is a no frills and zero red tape way of getting a fun world ranking from every round of golf you have, whether in an official competition or just socially. The idea is to give everyone something to play for, aim for and measure against. Been something I thought about for years but finally got the courage to create it and put it out in the wild :) If you don't mind taking a look and letting me know your thoughts, that would be awesome. I think it could really be fun if a lot of people got involved. 

Link is below.

(removed)

All the best,

Steve

London, UK

[iacas]

I'll let this stand for now (it violates the policy of this site to join and immediately begin promoting your own work, because you know there's a commercial aspect to this somewhere) because I'm curious: what's the point?

You have a non-verified ranking of a select few people (those who choose to submit their information to you). All so they can know they're ranked 547th in their "division" behind 546 guys that they've likely never heard of nor will ever play against?

Why?

Feels like a way to just gather a whole bunch of information about golfers so they can be targeted with marketing or something.

[Finman]

3 minutes ago, iacas said:

All so they can know they're ranked 547th in their "division" behind 546 guys that they've likely never heard of nor will ever play against?

Agree, would be a fun idea if you can create your own group, (i.e. High School buddies scattered across the US, country club players, etc) and get rankings from there.  But I guess if the purpose is to see "World" rankings then this is going in a different direction.  

[Phil McGleno]

11 minutes ago, iacas said:

Feels like a way to just gather a whole bunch of information about golfers so they can be targeted with marketing or something.

Could not have said it better.-Golfers give them personal info they sell it to others or spam them themselves.

[RandallT]

35 minutes ago, Wornout1iron said:

I think it could really be fun if a lot of people got involved. 

This bolded will be a challenge, I think. Not sure what is in it for us, as we can look up already what percent of people in the world are at each handicap level. Many of us don't really care anyway, as is well documented on forums like this. We play for many different reasons.

The other (perhaps bigger?) challenge is data integrity. 

1. People suck at entering data- particularly when it's voluntary and without incentive
2. People like to make a mockery of public lists, and put in a bunch of garbage. Not everyone, but enough trolls are out there. How will you make sure the entries are legit?

I tend to agree with the personal info stuff above, and the lots of folks will be skeptical that they'll just be spammed. Unless you specifically say otherwise in a privacy statement of some sort, people will naturally conclude that this is a commercial venture to make a profit on the back end.

Sorry, don't mean to be a Debbie Downer.

 

[Wornout1iron]

Hi guys,

Firstly, thanks for coming back on this so swiftly. Let me just say, this is not a spamming thing or data collection thing or anything like that. It is a genuine idea that I had to create a fun way of measuring your weekly/monthly round of golf against other golfers out there. I imagine there would be a lot of ties as if you shot 12 over par off a 12 handicap you are net "level" and I am sure there would be a lot of people on that score but equally, you could have a great round of say 5 over off a 12 and be net -7 which is pretty cool. As least I think so. Also it encourages people to go as low as they can and this fights against handicap padding which can be a problem sometimes. 

Thanks also for the feedback re data concern. Clearly this something that needs to be clarified as it has been raised multiple times in the comments above. If you look at the site, email is an optional field for this exact reason. You can submit scores with just your name (which does not have to be your real name). 

I included email so I could notify people that their scores were entered (I do it manually at the moment) and that I shared it on the GWR Twitter account and on Instagram. 

[Lihu]

I'm surprised that Game Golf doesn't provide you with enough information?

[Wornout1iron]

5 minutes ago, Lihu said:

I'm surprised that Game Golf doesn't provide you with enough information?

Is Game Golf free? GWR is free. 

[Lihu]

Just now, Wornout1iron said:

Is Game Golf free? GWR is free. 

Game Golf can be free if you have a decent smart phone, but it's somewhat a pain to use without tags. You'd have to manually press the button for the club you are about to use. The belt unit is only about $100 in many discount places.

It's really cheap.

[iacas]

18 minutes ago, Wornout1iron said:

I imagine there would be a lot of ties as if you shot 12 over par off a 12 handicap you are net "level" and I am sure there would be a lot of people on that score but equally, you could have a great round of say 5 over off a 12 and be net -7 which is pretty cool.

You don't need your website to know shooting 7 below your handicap is a great round. Or that shooting a 77 still puts you well back of thousands and thousands of golfers that day.

The rest of your post raised some other serious questions, but I'll let others respond to those if they care.

Welcome to TST.

[Wornout1iron]

I have seen this but it is fiddly and well, a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks. GWR is more binary. You shoot a score, you enter it. Tried to keep it as simple as possible.

[bkuehn1952]

23 minutes ago, Wornout1iron said:

... a fun way of measuring your weekly/monthly round of golf against other golfers out there. I imagine there would be a lot of ties as if you shot 12 over par off a 12 handicap you are net "level" and I am sure there would be a lot of people on that score but equally, you could have a great round of say 5 over off a 12 and be net -7 which is pretty cool. As least I think so. Also it encourages people to go as low as they can and this fights against handicap padding which can be a problem sometimes. 

There is/was a largely defunct site (oobgolf) that sort of had the same idea.  All the members (free) of oobgolf would record their scores from all over the world.  If one were interested in comparing one's results, there was a "Leaderboard" [ http://www.oobgolf.com/golfers/best_scores.php ] .  I know I was never particularly interested in where I stood compared to others on a weekly, monthly or annual basis.  The other issue was "members" who had no idea how to record a score or who would enter 13 holes or just make up something.

Good luck with the idea.  I recommend, if it starts rolling, that you have a way to weed out fake, incorrect or incomplete scores. 

[Missouri Swede]

I'm still not sure I see the purpose of it for me.  

A quick Google search says there are an estimated 60 million golfers in the world.  If all of us use your service, I'm not sure it will help me to know that I rank #48,238,327.

If not all 60 million use the service, then it's only a partial sampling, and the actual rank doesn't mean very much.  If the intent is to see where I rank percentile-wise, then I can already get that estimate through a handicap.

So thank you for your suggestion, but I'll decline.

[Wornout1iron]

1 minute ago, bkuehn1952 said:

There is/was a largely defunct site (oobgolf) that sort of had the same idea.  All the members (free) of oobgolf would record their scores from all over the world.  If one were interested in comparing one's results, there was a "Leaderboard" [ http://www.oobgolf.com/golfers/best_scores.php ] .  I know I was never particularly interested in where I stood compared to others on a wekkly, monthly or annual basis.  The other issue was "members" who had no idea how to record a score or who would enter 13 holes or just make up something.

Good luck with the idea.  I recommend, if it starts rolling, that you have a way to weed out fake, incorrect or incomplete scores. 

 

Thank you so much for this. 

1 minute ago, Missouri Swede said:

I'm still not sure I see the purpose of it for me.  

A quick Google search says there are an estimated 60 million golfers in the world.  If all of us use your service, I'm not sure it will help me to know that I rank #48,238,327.

If not all 60 million use the service, then it's only a partial sampling, and the actual rank doesn't mean very much.  If the intent is to see where I rank percentile-wise, then I can already get that estimate through a handicap.

So thank you for your suggestion, but I'll decline.

 

Thanks for this feedback. Actually, you would not be no. 48,238,327 in the world because 1. if you have a bad round, you are probably not going to enter the score and 2. In most divisions about -8 is the best score (net of handicap) so you would be say tie for number 3 in the world in your handicap division if you beat your handicap by say 4 shots. 

For example if 1 million people are tied at -5 in their division and you shoot -4, you are second (in terms of ranking as that is the second best score of the month). Agreed if there were 1 million at -5 and you shot -4 to be ranked 1,000,001 that would suck. We don't do it like that. This way you could say, wow, if I had made that last putt, I would have been tied best in the world in my division.

 

[iacas]

19 minutes ago, Wornout1iron said:

I have seen this but it is fiddly and well, a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks. GWR is more binary. You shoot a score, you enter it. Tried to keep it as simple as possible.

Someone can enter whatever score they want and whatever name they want. You have no way of verifying anything, and your website is hosted on a free host.

14 minutes ago, Missouri Swede said:

I'm still not sure I see the purpose of it for me.

I'm not sure of the purpose of it for anyone.

Nothing here seems well thought out at all.

[Missouri Swede]

1 minute ago, iacas said:

I'm not sure of the purpose of it for anyone.

Data mining for those who set it up 

[Wornout1iron]

Just now, Missouri Swede said:

Data mining for those who set it up 

As I stated above, there is no requirement for email or verified information (to protect people who are concerned about that). That said, I take the point there with this "non-verification" approach there are challenges as to who is entering their scores and whether those scores are in fact genuine. These are good points. The reason I did not go the "verification" approach was because the extra steps involved which tend to turn people off. 

[iacas]

If I may ask, @Wornout1iron… how old are you?

I don't mean this as a slight, but this thing you've made (with no investment of money, and a little in time) seems like the ideas people have when they're kids. There are a bunch of holes here, obvious ones, and if there's no back-end marketing concept here, I'm not sure I even sense an end-plan. A gameplan (or a business model).