An oldie and a goody. I get a lot of questions about handicaps – “I didn’t even play and my handicap changed!”, “Why does it take longer for my handicap to go up? It certainly can go down quickly….” There is another reason for revisiting the subject of handicaps, and that will be explained in my next blog entry…. Stay tuned! For now, back into the time machine to the year 2012…
TM’s REGL Rules Blog – 4 September – Handicaps
I began my series of blogs this year with one on the importance of following the rules to ensure that handicaps are equitably maintained by all golfers in our league. Everyone knows that Fran Lauer spends a great deal of time keeping handicaps for all of us and updating them as the season progresses, but few of us really understand how the calculations are done each week. I thought I’d spend this blog on trying to understand the art of handicapping. This will be my last blog entry for the golfing year unless I get the bug to stick something else on the website. I hope some of you have enjoyed my ramblings, and more importantly, I hope I’ve been able to help you understand the purpose of golf’s rules, and proper execution on the golf course to ensure you and your opponents are playing within the rules of golf in our competitions. It’s my hope to return again next year with some new perspectives on our great game. Again, I’d ask anyone reading these entries to suggest topics for next year’s entries – your thoughts and opinions would be very helpful to me.
It would be great if we all played on the PGA Tour – there are no handicaps to worry about when playing with a bunch of scratch golfers. There would be prize money to select, and we’d be playing on the greatest golf courses in the country. However, the PGA Tour is a pretty exclusive club, and we aren’t all good enough to say we’re scratch golfers. The purpose of any golf handicap is to attempt to level the playing field for golfers of nearly all abilities. Once the handicaps have been incorporated, the resulting test of golf should be won by the player who’s playing better with respect to his potential. In our league, I’ve seen handicaps of +1 (one better than scratch) all the way to a maximum handicap of 18 strokes per 9 holes (a double bogie score on all nine holes).
But what goes into the calculation of a handicap each week? For our league, the calculation requires the best 4 scores of the last 6 rounds that we’ve played in the league. Establishment of a handicap on the first night of league play has its own set of rules – see the REGL rules for that special case. Fran also needs to consult the league schedule to see which 9 holes we’ll be playing that week, since the rating and slope of the Ruggles front and back nines are different. Therefore, you may see your handicap change from one week to the next even though you haven’t recorded a score. The handicap calculation begins by looking at the last 6 scores and determining the adjusted gross score for each round (deducting strokes from the gross score base on your handicap for that round). Say you were an 8-handicap the night you shot a 50 in league play. On the 4th rated hole (on the front nine at Ruggles, that’s Hole #4 for the men), you carded a 9, and on the 9th rated 3rd hole you plunked one in the water and took a 5, the rest of the holes were all bogies. Playing as a 8-handicap that night, for handicap purposes you were allowed a double bogey on holes rated 1 through 8, and a bogey on hole #3. So, for Fran’s handicap purposes, your gross score was adjusted, lowering that 9 on number 4 to a double bogey 6, and the double bogey 5 on #3 to a bogey 4. Your new adjusted score for that night would no longer be a 50, it’s a 46. Since that night you played on the front nine, Fran uses the course rating and slope of the white tees from the front nine, which unless they’ve changed since 2010 are 35.8 and 130. A handicap differential is then calculated ((The Adjusted Gross Score (46) – Course Rating (35.8))*113/Slope (130)) or 8.9 (you played worse than your handicap going into the match).
Now, Fran looks at your last 6 rounds and picks out the 4 lowest handicap differentials (if your last 6 were 8.5, 9.0, 7.9, 8.1, 7.6 and 8.9, he’d pick out 7.6, 7.9, 8.1 and 8.5), averages those 4 (8.0), and multiplies by a factor of 0.96 (7.7). He then determines which nine will be played in the next week, and multiplies the handicap by the slope of the nine divided by 113. If we were playing the back 9 that next week, this would result in a new handicap of 7.7*123/113 = 8.4 which rounds to the nearest whole number, 8. Your handicap would not change between the two weeks.
But what do Course Rating and Slope mean? The Course Rating is the number of strokes that a scratch golfer playing a good round would expect to play during on that course. The course rating is typically between 67 and 77 for an 18-hole venue. Obviously the higher the course rating, the tougher the course will be. Slope is generally defined as the relative toughness of a course for a bogey golfer (18-hole handicap of 18) in comparison to a scratch golfer. This number ranges from a value of 55 to 155, with 113 being the rating for “average toughness”. Course slope was devised by a Navy Lt Commander who devised a structured method to summarize how hard it is for a bogey golfer to play on a given course. When playing on a more difficult course, the scores of higher-handicapped players will rise more quickly than those of lower handicapped golfers. The slope rating of a set of tees predicts the straight-line rise in anticipated score versus USGA course handicap, as in the mathematical slope of a graph. Course raters evaluate the relative hardness of each hole from each set of tees to determine the slope rating and course rating numbers. I do not know who sets the relative handicap ranking for each hole (#1 handicap for Ruggles is #7, etc), but I tend to think the course raters also play a role in that. Brent Kelly has an excellent explanation of what the rating team looks at when they rate a course. See http://golf.about.com/cs/rulesofgolf/a/hfaq_determine.htm for that!
I’ve run into countless players after a match who said, “I shot a great round and got smoked!” after a night in REGL play. It happens. Sometimes you play very, very well, but your opponent is also having the round if his life. The handicap system doesn’t feel very fair on those nights, you just don’t have a chance of getting points for your team. Rather than be angry about the injustice, I’ve learned to try to appreciate an opponent’s really good round and enjoy it with them. When you lose to someone playing their best, there’s not much for you to do about it. Sometimes playing with someone playing their best will push me to get the most out of my play, and I’ll push my own game. Shutting down on a night like that after only a few holes leads to disgruntlement and could lead your opponent to sandbag his way to the clubhouse.
Sandbagging does happen – some people just think it’s more important for them to keep a larger handicap for their next match. It’s discouraging when you see it happen, and there’s only a couple of ways I can see to combat the practice. If you suspect short putts are being missed intentionally when you’re out of a hole, concede a putt – you can do so within the length of the flagstick. Every hole is worth at least one point, and if you start to see extra strokes, play harder to push your competitors to stay in holes longer into your match. The scoring system devised for REGL is a thing of brilliance, a combination of stroke and match play, where you can still earn at least a point on the last hole of your match. I’ve played my last hole of the season, but good luck to those of you in the playoffs – play well, and we’ll see you on the tee next year if we can find a new commissioner.