Proposed world handicap system

[Yanner]

Sounds pretty short and easy to me Nick  RAGC is 144 from the blues or 141 from the whites...

Average is 113 apparently.

I believe that every course in Scotland has a course rating and slope index and they have had for a while now. Surely they'll just have to train a few more people in England & Wales (& NI?) - can only take a day per course surely?

I'm pretty sure Wales did all of their courses as well when introducing slope was talked about a good few years back,  10-15, possibly more, years ago.

[Cols_Ears]

If https://www.ushandicap.com//golf-course/course.asp?facilityID=28889 is correct, RSG is 145 even from the medal tees. Does that mean if they start accounting this our handicaps will take a hit?

Under the USGA system your handicap index is adjusted by the slope of the course you are playing on. Multiply your handicap by the slope index for the curse / tees you are playing and divide by 113, this is your course handicap.

More details can be found here http://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/Handicapping/handicap-manual.html#!rule-14367

[Blofeld]

If https://www.ushandicap.com//golf-course/course.asp?facilityID=28889 is correct, RSG is 145 even from the medal tees. Does that mean if they start accounting this our handicaps will take a hit?

As Col has indicated.....what  happens is that the best 8/20 rounds is used to calculate your Handicap INDEX. Then, to calculate how many shots you will get playing from any given set of tees, you multiply your INDEX by the Slope Rating of the course you are going to play and then divide by 113.

So....your Handicap Index will probably take a hit compared to your current CONGU h/cap, but the strokes you receive when actually playing probably wont change much at all.

[Stu-Pid]

As Col has indicated.....what  happens is that the best 8/20 rounds is used to calculate your Handicap INDEX. Then, to calculate how many shots you will get playing from any given set of tees, you multiply your INDEX by the Slope Rating of the course you are going to play and then divide by 113.

So....your Handicap Index will probably take a hit compared to your current CONGU h/cap, but the strokes you receive when actually playing probably wont change much at all.

But don't forget that you calculate your initial HC (based on the best 8 of 20) using the course rating for the tees that you are playing from, not par.  Just like SSS/ CSS your course rating can be higher or lower than par.  So if your best 8 rounds averaged 10 over par on a course rated at 72.0 with a par of 70 then your starting HC would be 8, not 10.

But if you then went and played at a course with a slope rating of 140 then your handicap of 8 would equate to getting 10 shots on the day.

Nice and simple...

[Cols_Ears]

Good opinion piece here https://www.nationalclubgolfer.com/news/forget-golf-handicap-issues-worldwide/

[Stu-Pid]

Of course one of the biggest issues that we haven't mentioned yet is the fact that the vast majority of social rounds of golf allow short putts to be given rather than putted out, and often are played as 4BBB matches rather than singles (and I imagine that there are other 'casual' play rules that are used at times rather than playing strictly to the rule book).  How that ties into recording social rounds for handicapping purposes will be a challenge, and I can also see quite a lot of resistance to submitting casual rounds for handicapping purposes amongst club golfers.

[Blofeld]

Of course one of the biggest issues that we haven't mentioned yet is the fact that the vast majority of social rounds of golf allow short putts to be given rather than putted out, and often are played as 4BBB matches rather than singles (and I imagine that there are other 'casual' play rules that are used at times rather than playing strictly to the rule book).  How that ties into recording social rounds for handicapping purposes will be a challenge, and I can also see quite a lot of resistance to submitting casual rounds for handicapping purposes amongst club golfers.

As I understand it the inclusion of social golf rounds is not mandatory to allow for some "local flexibility". The expectation is that for us here in the UK it will be similar to the current "supplementary" rounds where the golfer has to declare his intention before setting out to play.

[SkankyShanky]

I just hope they can do the calculation in the handicap software without too much user input based on my past experience with h/c secretaries!

[Blofeld]

I just hope they can do the calculation in the handicap software without too much user input based on my past experience with h/c secretaries!

Oh individual golfers are going to be screwed under this new system.....the vast majority of them will simply be unable to determine their handicap index on a day to day basis, as they simply will not know what their best 8 scores from the last twenty have been and whether the latest round is better than any of those 8 or.....if one of their best 8 rounds was played 20 rounds ago and has now dropped to 21 meaning that it doesn't get included...and we now have to go back and figure out which of the last 20 has just become one of the best 8....(unless you are Stu of course with a spreadsheet  )

no....the casual golfer will not have a Scooby Doo about his current handicap index.....and god help us when they try to multiply by the rating of the course they are playing and then divide by 113 to figure out how many shots they get....the change from 3/4s to 9/10ths is seemingly too complex and half the folks I know end up trying....."well i'm off 15 so 1/10th of 15 is 1.5 so 9/10ths must be err....9x5 is 45 so its point 5 something, carry the 4 over and 9x1 =9 plus the 4 = 13....ahh yes...13.5" instead of taking the 1.5 from the 15 in the first place!!!!! If they're struggling with tenths then 113/129 is just going to send them doolally!!! (and if they do manage it they'd probably end up using the ladies slope rating by mistake!!!).

[Stu-Pid]

no....the casual golfer will not have a Scooby Doo about his current handicap index.....

But think of the fun that you can have when you let the guy who just shot 40 points know that his HC has actually just gone up as a result!  It's a real shame that lifetime best round of 45 points was now 21 rounds ago...

[3puttwizard]

Does the new computer break if you get 20 0.1s in a row?

Pretty sure I had that last year and I never got adjusted

[Stu-Pid]

Just browsing my county unions site and found a report of the progress of rating course for Slope.

They completed 7 in 2017 (including my home course), plan to do another 7 in 2018 and the same in 2019. This would leave NINE courses unrated at the time of introduction of the World Handicapping Scheme.

Somewhat worryingly the report states that it is the assessors understand that courses that have not been rated by then will be given a temporary SSS/Slope figure by England Golf pending formal rating!!

So if they cant get it done they will guess!!....would have been interesting to see what they would have "guessed" for my course as the general perception of it is that it is a short easy course!!!....but was rated at 129 off the back tees.

Nick - Maybe I am misunderstanding how things work, but aren't slope ratings based on statistical analysis of rounds played by actual golfers rather than a course being 'assessed' like they are for SSS?

My understanding was that the courses receive a 'course rating' which is assessed in the same way as SSS (assessors walking the course), albeit with a different measurement system.  Course ratings are also to one decimal place rather than being rounded to the nearest whole number.  The slope rating is then calculated looking at actual rounds played (by scratch and 'bogey' golfers) and working out how much tougher it is for 'bogey' golfers than scratch golfers based on the results.  So in theory every course could be rated for slope (bit not course rating) without ever being visited?

The course would need to be visited for the course rating to be calculated, but from what I have seen there seems to be a very close match between SSS and course rating, so if they did have to fudge things and just set the course rating to equal SSS then I don't think they'd be too far out.

[Stu-Pid]

The GWRX version of this thread is a painful read...   

One thing that I did learn from it though is that in the US and Australia they don't actually use the average of the best 10 (or 8) scores, and instead that average is then multiplied by 0.96 (0.93 in Australia), so it is likely that will also be the case in the new scheme.

Another thing that is also very apparent is that the VAST majority of US rounds used for handicapping purposes and not from competition rounds and are almost certainly not played to the correct rules of golf (casual rounds between friends).  So either they will have to massively adjust the way that they do things in the US, or the UK will have to adjust more to the US way of doing things.  Will be interesting to see what happens.

[Blofeld]

Nick - Maybe I am misunderstanding how things work, but aren't slope ratings based on statistical analysis of rounds played by actual golfers rather than a course being 'assessed' like they are for SSS?

My understanding was that the courses receive a 'course rating' which is assessed in the same way as SSS (assessors walking the course), albeit with a different measurement system.  Course ratings are also to one decimal place rather than being rounded to the nearest whole number.  The slope rating is then calculated looking at actual rounds played (by scratch and 'bogey' golfers) and working out how much tougher it is for 'bogey' golfers than scratch golfers based on the results.  So in theory every course could be rated for slope (bit not course rating) without ever being visited?

The course would need to be visited for the course rating to be calculated, but from what I have seen there seems to be a very close match between SSS and course rating, so if they did have to fudge things and just set the course rating to equal SSS then I don't think they'd be too far out.

I don't believe that analysis is made of actual scores.... our course has been rated and our handicap secretary made no mention of having to provide historical scores to the assessors. They certainly have difficulty in calculating slope at our place based on scores submitted by scratch golfers because we don't have any!!! Our ladies also would struggle for a statistical analysis to have any weight as there are less than 40 of them and only 1 with a single figure handicap and just 4 others under 20!!!

Ive always believed that courses are rated for both a scratch golfer and a bogey (18 h'cap) golfer at the same time (different assumptions are made regarding the abilities of scratch and bogey golfers in terms of how far they drive the ball and how long a par 4 can be for the player to reach in two shots) and then the slope calculated from the difference.

I could be wrong though... I'll ask our handicap sec next time I see him if he had to provide score data.

[Stu-Pid]

I could be wrong though... I'll ask our handicap sec next time I see him if he had to provide score data.

Don’t worry Nick, looks like you are indeed correct and it is just two separate ratings from the assessors.

I got confused by the below which seems to suggest that it ideally uses empirical data, but uses an assessors rating if that data isn’t available.

How are course ratings and slopes calculated?

Those figures are generated two ways.

Ideally, all courses are rated empirically. That means that hundreds upon hundreds of rounds are played on each tee under various weather conditions by scratch golfers, bogey golfers and high-handicappers. All these rounds are stored in the USGA's handicap database. They know how Golfer X has played other courses which are already rated.

Their computer mashes all these data points together to generate the rating (by examining the performances of scratch golfers) and then the slope (adding in the results from higher-handicappers).

The problem is that it takes months to acquire a large-enough sampling of actual rounds to perform the above calculations. In the meantime, the course would otherwise remain "unrated" were it not for the second method of rating a course.

The USGA has studied the elements that make a course easy or difficult for many years. They have computer models which predict that adding a sand trap here or water hazard there will boost a hole's difficulty by such-and-such an average number of strokes for the scratch golfer and a different number of strokes for a bogey golfer. They also quantize the influence of dog legs, narrow fairways, trees, hard pan, deep rough, swales, gulleys, green speed, you name it. All these course ingredients are captured in a handbook which is available to a course architect so a preliminary rating and slope can be estimated for each tee color.

These ratings and slopes may be thought of as similar to a provisional handicap in that the figures are estimates which are treated as "better than nothing" yet not as good as the real ones which will be reckoned after several thousand rounds have been recorded.

I don’t think that is actually correct as every other site I’ve found seems to only mention the assessors rating a course rather than empirical data being used.

Of course I do wonder whether empirical data would be a better way to calculate slope given the thousands of rounds of data that every course has collected.  Even if you don’t have scratch golfers at a club, the performance of 18 handicappers in relation to SSS should give a good indication of slope rating, and if you factor in the performance of all handicap levels then that gives you tens of thousands of data points to work with.