Your New WHS Index

finglashoop

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123743170#Comment_123743170

Someone has to come in with a good score.

This late in the season winning scores should be coming down shouldnt they. We've had nearly a full season and yet some are coming in with 47 and 48 points.

System is a good idea but in practice its terrible

soverybored1878

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123742409#Comment_123742409

They don't use divisions and then have an overall winner? We do at my club and prizes are awarded to the winner in each handicap division. Keeps everyone happy.

That is the only way to do it in my opinion. Anything else just pisses off the better players and rightly so. I say that as someone off 17.

thewobbler

My thoughts on eg Killarney.

WHS isn’t the issue here so much as the absurd variance in slope ratings / course handicaps.

I’ll explain from my side.

My home course (Cloverhill) is short - it tops out at 6k yards, normally plays about 5.8k yards, and we don’t have a plethora of bunkers. So it is what the ratings people assess as “easy”, with a 110 rating. And what this rating doesn’t seem to concern itself with is a) small and very fast greens, and b) that we’ve a 4 hole stretch in the middle of the course where any errant shot is a lost ball, plus another 5-6 holes where any slice is dead.

Because of how we’re rated, it means a) we play off unnaturally low competition handicaps, and as such b) we have to shoot unnaturally low scores to gain significant handicap cuts.

Is it possible for a good golfer to tear Cloverhill up? Yes. Very much so. Is it possible for a mid handicapper to shoot his lowest score ever around Cloverhill, yes very much so. But most weeks, for everyone, the course wins. As it does elsewhere.

But here’s the rub now when I go visiting,

I’m used to playing off a competition handicap of 15-19 in Cloverhill. That’s me currently a 23.5 index after a poor season. In basic maths, it’s usually 3 points for par.

When I visit almost any other course I get a ream of extra strokes. I played off 27 earlier this year in Palmerstown. 24 in Greenore, 26 in Concra. I’d have got 29 had I been in Killeen Killarney this week. Think about this - me who’s used to gaining 3 points for a par, getting 4 points for a par on not 1, not 2… but 11 holes. Ffs I’d be embarrassed not to smash through 36 points; I can do it just by turning up for 9 holes. And because of this I won a Greenore open last year, and finished 2nd this year with a round including 5 x 3 putts. I played well both days… but not mid-40s well.

Yes Killeen is longer. Yes Greenore is longer. But the fairways on these big courses are generally much wider, and I daresay give anyone like me (a mid handicapper, medium hitter, and an experienced golfer) a wide fairway, and we will make hay on half the holes on the course.

Seve OB

well put @thewobbler

you make Cloverill sound like a prison.

Oh wait…… 🤣

no seriously through, what you are saying makes a lot of sense. I’ve seen it loads of places, easy courses for me are not easy courses for others so they have high slopes and course ratings, and vice versa, easy courses for others are not easy courses for me.

essentially what I have seen is long courses will be given tough ratings and shorter courses have easy ratings. Little or no thought gone into the ratings after that. Eg a bit of gorse on an short course is lost ball, tricky greens could equal lots of 3 putts, etc

I find my home course Greystones quite difficult, even though it’s a short course and most members will tell you the same. I’m also a member in castleknock and even though it’s a good bit longer and supposedly tougher, I find it way easier.
I currently have out of my 8 counting rounds, 1 from my home course, 4 from Castleknock and 3 from others (grange castle, st Patrick’s at Rosapenna and Portmarnock Links…… all which WHS would have you believe are considerably tougher than greystones 🤷‍♂️

prawnsambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123744066#Comment_123744066

Very good points and echoes my feelings too.

My home course Macreddin is the same. Front nine mostly requires a straight drive or you're reloading, back nine also requires position and accuracy or you're in bogey/double bogey territory at best.

Slope rating off the whites is 128, course rating is 72.3. For comparison, the green tees in Woodenbridge are 127/69.2, the whites are 130/70.5. The shortest tees in Mt. Juliet are 135/72.7. I've played those and other courses with similar slope ratings to Macreddin and have walked away with 40+ points every time.

I believe the ratings were done initially on paper based on previous CONGU ratings which were based on completely different criteria. Hence the inaccuracies.

We were re-rated this year. 12 people arrived at the course to do the rating. We haven't got the revised ratings yet, but it will be interesting.

thewobbler

@Seve OB lol, sometimes it feels like a prison to be fair! There’s nowhere easier on this earth to lose a golf ball than our “amen corner”.

To add more meat to my earlier point. I’d guess there’s two types of 18 handicappers in golf. There’s a group who play steady, sensible golf and play for 2 points (gross bogey) on each hole. These lads don’t trouble leaderboards on away days, but pick up some prizes at home. Then there’s the other group, the majority, who are par-double golfers (who without warning extend into occasional birdies and regular dings) ie they’ve got the distance and skill to score on any hole, but not the technique to do it on repeat, and sometimes that lack of technique can really hurt. On low rated courses like Cloverhill we just won’t get enough birdie 4 pointers to cancel out the inevitable dings. But give us a clatter of opportunities to score 4 points for a par, and we will start stacking them up. And just like that, the 3 or 4 water/lost balls we usually end up with, just don’t matter.

big_drive

Does anyone have the list of criteria that the raters use when they arrive to rate a course? I know there is one category based on landing areas and how much trouble there is in play. I presume hazards, etc are important categories too.

paulos53

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123743982#Comment_123743982

I haven't seen how the prizes were allocated. Just a list of scores on masterscoreboard.

However masterscoreboard does have the functionality to split the results by handicap division and that wasn't visible here.

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123744546#Comment_123744546

I actually read a good write up on this recently on r/golf. From what I read, the biggest factor is distance by a huge margin.

https://www.reddit.com/r/golf/comments/1m6h5zx/how_golf_courses_are_rated_a_primer/

Plagiarising it for those who don't want to follow the link:

What is the difference between Course Rating and Slope?

Course rating is what a scratch golfer should shoot under normal conditions when playing a good round. It is a number directly related to score. A course of standard difficulty has a rating of 72.0.

Slope is how much more difficult the course is for a bogey golfer compared to a scratch golfer. It gets the name slope because, as you'll see in a minute, we multiply the difference in difficulty between a scratch and a bogey golfer -- effectively drawing a line between the two with that factor serving as the slope of the line.

Who does these ratings?

The USGA has developed guidelines to standardize the process. Actual ratings are done by the local association (e.g. Virginia State Golf Association) by volunteers. A course is supposed to be rated every 10 years or after a major renovation/condition change. A rating team will consist of about 3-4 raters.

Importantly, the raters are simply collecting data and measurements. That data is then uploaded to some database, and the USGA does some kind of number crunching to get the values. There is very, very little that is actually subjective about the process.

What factors affect a course rating / slope?

The primary determinant -- by a huge margin -- of a course's rating and slope is distance. In general, distance alone is going to make up about 95-97% of course rating and about 93-97% of slope rating.

Course obstacles are each given a score based on difficulty. The same obstacle will get one score for a scratch player and another score for a bogey player (more below). The scores range from 0-10, with 4 being standard difficulty.

The obstacles include the things you would expect like bunkers, water hazards, fairway width, green complexes, etc.

The difficulty of a hazard is evaluated by its distance from the optimum landing zone. Bunkers are given some additional consideration based on the depth and severity.

Why two different ratings?

Because the same obstacle can present a starkly different challenge for a scratch golfer versus a bogey golfer.

For example, let's say you have a tee shot with a forced 150y carry to reach the fairway. This presents little problem for the scratch golfer, but is a significant obstacle for a bogey (or worse) golfer. It might get rated as a 5 for a scratch but a 9 for a bogey golfer.

The scratch golfer is assumed to have 230y of carry with 20y of roll; the bogey golfer is assumed to have 180y of carry and 20y of roll.

OK, so how is Course Rating actually calculated?

The overwhelming criteria for establishing course rating is simply yardage. More specifically, it is "effective playing length," which takes into account things like altitude, elevation changes, dog legs, forced layups, prevailing winds, and rollout. So a 400y hole that is uphill into the wind is going to have a longer effective yardage than a 400y that is downhill with the wind at your back.

You take the effective yardage, divide it by 220, and then add 40.9. That gives you the baseline Scratch Yardage Rating. A course with an effective playing length of 6600y would have a Scratch Yardage Rating of 70.9.

Now you evaluate all the obstacles mentioned above on a scale of 0-10. All that is added up and multiplied by a standard factor.

You add together those two items to get the course rating. So, a course of 6600 yards and an obstacle rating of 1.5 would have a Course Rating of 72.4.

This is FASCINATING! What about Slope?

Similar process, except first we have to calculate Bogey Rating.

That starts with effective yardage. You take the yardage, divide by 160, and add 50.7. (So our 6600y course has a yardage rating of 92.)

We do the same thing with the obstacles: add them all up (as appropriate for a bogey golfer), and multiply them by a different factor. Importantly, the factor for Bogey Rating is different than for Course Rating: bogey rating gives more weight to obstacles.

Add the two together and this gives us our Bogey Rating. So our 6600y course with a 5.3 obstacle score has a Bogey Rating of 97.3.

I asked you about slope!

Finally we are ready to calculate slope. It's a straight-forward equation:

Slope = (Bogey Rating - Course Rating) * 5.381

So our course's total ratings would be 72.4/134

spacecoyote

I think its part of it, but not enough to explain high 40s golf winning comps regularly.

Its partly down to new golfers and handicap secs just letting the system calc their number.

You end up with fit healthy guys in their 20-30s getting handicaps that are high 20s or 30s, when in the old system they might, best case scenario, be given 18-20 as starting handicaps. They tend to improve fast and clean up while doing so.

So rather than you start playing to your handicap, your handicap aligns with your playing.

Then letting a habdicap shift by 5 in a year just is too much.

So a combination of flawed assignment of handicap, too high an allowance for movement and inconsistent slope/CR calculations means lads end up with way too many shots, and make life more difficult for the guys who are grinding to maintain a lower handicap, bringing in ok scores but never in a position to compete with the silly scores.

A 27 handicap shooting a 17 over round is infinitely more likely than a 7 handicap shooting a 3 under.

Gone are the days of lads battling for a buffer to avoid the 0.1. They should still be fighting for a round as it could end up a counting one, but I think some of that incentive has disappeared

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123744771#Comment_123744771

I've posted before that I think the 8 best out of last 20 is too wide a spread.

The differential between the best and the 8th best score is going to be a lot tighter for a low handicapper compared to a high handicapper, which is going to keep higher handicaps inflated. Like a 20 handicapper could have differentials in their best 8 ranging from around 16 to around 24.

If they changed it to best 5 it would tighten things up. I know the playing handicap adjustment is supposed to balance this but I am not sure it has a significant enough impact.

moycullen14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123744494#Comment_123744494

I'd agree with this, but you get this variance with lower handicappers too.

If a course is rated too low then members handicaps will be too high. On their own course this makes little enough difference as it all evens out. The problem happens when members go to other courses or have visitors. The former can make out like bandits (I think this is what's happening in Killarney, above) and the latter can't compete.

I'm a member of two courses and I see this effect all the time. On the 'easier' course, I'm just not competitive at all. All my counting scores are from the 'harder' course. The is partly because my handicap is too low for the easy course and also because the 'easy' members handicap's are too high - relative to the other course. My handicap index would be 50% higher if I only used scores from the easy course.

Whether this is because the ratings of the two courses are just plain wrong ( 118 vs 135) or because one course just suits my game, I'm not sure. It's probably a bit of both. I'm prone to disasters on the easy course (double bogey +++) that rarely happen on the harder course. Tricky problem to solve.

paulos53

FYI, I went back into look at the scores and 2 of them have been removed. Both visitors if if remember correctly.
The 2 remaining scores are both club members.

coillcam

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123744771#Comment_123744771

Fyi, The handicap committees are mandated to only let the system calculate a golfer's handicap index until become fully developed (20 scores). It doesn't matter if the person drives it 300yds or won the All Ireland with Tipperary last year. After the 20 scores come in, an adjustment can be made if deemed necessary.

The idea being that after 20 scores the handicap, typical beginner's big improvement and current ability should have aligned. Fwiw I agree with upward movement being too easy. It should be tightened and encourage people to practice/grind it out.

The solution to eliminate most unrealistic big scores is simple. Only have prizes for people who have a minimum 20 scores on record with 4 or 5 comps too, sorting out beginners. Then have a maximum handicap cap for first prize and categories for the rest. You can go further and reduce the playing handicap allowance as necessary eg 90% vs 95% for singles. Golf Ireland are encouraging committees to actually do this.

Improperly rated courses are another problem altogether but I understand everyone's frustration. Our course was done for this year and suddenly became "easier". Net result is that winning scores are 4 to 6 shots better than handicap vs 6 to 8 shots better last year. We also now have less golfers at scratch or better due to higher score differentials. Next year the thought would be that we should be slightly more competitive at interclubs.

A "wrong" course rating can give your club a clear advantage or disadvantage during interclubs. Not banditry at all but this can easily round up to a 1-2 shot difference. More than enough to swing a match. Courses are being upgraded constantly and some ratings will be out of date. So it's an ongoing issue and hard to keep re-rating all courses.

Long Turn

 The handicap committees are mandated to 

only

 let the system calculate a golfer's handicap index until become fully developed (20 scores). It doesn't matter if the person drives it 300yds or won the All Ireland with Tipperary last year. After the 20 scores come in, an adjustment can be made if deemed necessary.

Long Turn

The committee consider past experience and previous sporting skills like hurling camogie tennis.

There is an issue with handicap committees just applying whatever the system throws up after 3 rounds.

That's a crazy thing to do ad a new golfer wouldn't know the course or greens after 3 rounds.

coillcam

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123745590#Comment_123745590

The system takes the lowest of the 3 differentials and adjusts it by -2. It's not an arbitrary calculation and nobody with a handful of cards should be let near a comp. As they put in scores it will rapidly catch up.

The first paragraph you mentioned above is not really in effect. Make new golders play a bunch of golf over a decent period of time and log scores before they can compete. Their handicap will be where it should be. No one is letting someone with 3 cards into a captain's prize.

I think a lot of what's behind this is people being litigious. You can't discriminate against me because I'm young, strong or someone saw me birdie 3 holes etc.

So you stick to the system and adjust/cut when there is evidence. There has to be a clear disparity between performance (score) and handicap. A single score on its own is not a strong enough reason.

The days of everyone getting 18 and having a 0.1 are long gone. I'm sure the governing bodies will adjust the whs over time.

The onus is on the clubs to "protect" their members with competition rules. It makes no difference what anyone's' handicap is until they are playing a comp.

prawnsambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123744761#Comment_123744761

I find that a bit strange. The examples I gave earlier don't fit the 93-98% length criteria.

moycullen14

13 up wins in a recent V par competition. 2nd was 6 up. Never seen the like of that before. Obviously a wildly inaccurate handicap, don't think it was intentional banditry, bandits would never shoot a score like that!

Seve OB

I’m on handicap committee and can tell you that we do not just let the system spit out an initial handicap. We always look at it and we quite often cap it

spacecoyote

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123755348#Comment_123755348

Could someone have submitted the card not realising he was doing it incorrectly. 13 up in V-par is silly stuff.

I remember we had a new guy in our club years ago who put his points in rather than strokes into computer. Can't remember the number of points it showed up in the comp, but he was the talk of the club for a couple of weeks

thewobbler

This reeks of someone who doesn’t understand how to record and a enter a score, more than of someone who was cheating,

13 net birdies and 5 net pars is not a score a “handicap cheat” would enter. The punishment to their HCI wouldn’t be worth it.

moycullen14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123755748#Comment_123755748

No necessarily. If the handicap is completely out of whack, by 10 shots or more say, then it is perfectly possible. Not sure of the specifics in this case but I think it must be down to not having 20 cards entered.

prawnsambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123755866#Comment_123755866

Not having 20 scores in doesn't mean you can get wildly varying scores. The early index calculations pretty much default to the best one score, so it corrects very quickly. Somebody playing their 4th or 5th round will be playing off the score differential of their very best out of that five.

Much more likely to be caused by someone not playing much qualifying golf, but getting lessons and practising and then turning up for a comp. Or as above, not understanding how v-par works. Which to me is the most likely.

moycullen14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123755529#Comment_123755529

I agree, this has to be done but if often isn't. A simple solution would be to cap the hcap until the 20 (or maybe 10) cards are entered and then let WHS take over.

It's especially problematic when we are not counting for 6 months of the year and you have kids/younger players who improve dramatically over a short period. I've heard of cases where hcap drops by 20 shots over a year.

prawnsambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123755897#Comment_123755897

That's not as simple as it sounds. When you make an adjustment to a handicap, that adjustment is applied to their previous 20 scores. If it's a new handicap, it just applies to the first three. After that it gets dropped off as new rounds are entered. So you have adjustments to the SDs for rounds 1, 2 and 3 and nothing on round 4 and subsequent rounds. You'd have to keep going in and making an adjustment after each round is played. And you have to notify the golfer each time before you apply an adjustment.

Edit: On top of that, each adjustment is added to the previous ones, so you'd end up with a sliding scale of adjustments rising through to the first round. I'd add that I've never seen this done, but that's how I'd expect it to operate.

coillcam

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123755891#Comment_123755891

Putting in the wrong score isn't necessarily the obvious answer unless you bash in a bunch of net birdies. Even if someone is confused by vpar. You're still writing the gross strokes on the card and entering that into the system. The obvious mistake would be in picking the ball up early. You'd need a marker and a player, both signing off on wrong gross scores.

For all the talk of new players or very high handicappers being at fault. People do have genuine absolute worldies. There are plenty of seasoned "regular" golfers who have a huge day out. Likely their best round ever or 1st low one in donkey's years. Your handicap crew can get reports on this (exceptional rounds). Anything of -7 or better is flagged. The majority of exceptional rounds are from new players who don't have 20 scores or juniors. The juniors can massively change in physique and ability from one summer to the next.

For an exceptional round, you automatically get a handicap adjustment from the system of -1 against your last 20 scores. If your score was -10 or better, then it is a -2 adjustment (quite rare). Committees can snip further as needed.

Just on winter golf, the committee should be monitoring this throughout and finally just before counting conditions return. While the system doesn't cover winter golf automatically. Anyone pulling up trees should be cut as a result. Some clubs are unwilling to do this as it may affect interclub teams.

Seve OB

I miss the buffer zone. mentioned it before and this article picks up on the exact point. your crap score that you are in the middle of might not count for your handicap now, but it might in a few rounds time

https://www.nationalclubgolfer.com/whs/would-whs-be-better-with-a-buffer-zone/

link won't paste properly for some reason

Seve OB

has anyone ever looked at what their handicap would be if we were still under CONGU rules?

I've recently dropped to 8.7

did a quick working there and I went back to September 2020 when I knew an exact handicap at an exact date (9.5, my lowest ever under CONGU)

I plugged in any cuts or .1's (capped at 10 per year) I would have received based on par-PCC as opposed to CSS

I left out any 9 hole rounds as they were messing with my formulas

I know not an exact science, but I would be 9.8 now.

Russman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123758957#Comment_123758957

That's a really interesting exercise, I must do similar to see what I come out at - I hit the soft cap earlier in the year so it'd interesting to see how the scores would have worked out. I did it once upon a time back in the day after a good year under the CONGU system when I got to 3.0 but would have been close to scratch under WHS - not an exact science as you say.

But, isn't the bigger issue simply that WHS is more reflective of current "form" rather than "ability" per se ? Leaving aside anything dodgy going on, there's always going to be some of that, I think with the variances in scores that club golfers naturally have, its just far more likely now that somebody in a full field will shoot the lights out. Personally I think under CONGU, over half the field teed it up on a Saturday with no chance whatsoever, whereas WHS brings almost everyone into potentially competitive on a given day.

I definitely agree the ratings are pretty whacky and that's something that needs to be sorted (if it actually can be). I mean, if the ratings aren't accurate and aren't really comparable, it kind of makes the whole premise of WHS redundant. I don't know if we were re-rated or not this year (there was some talk of it happening) but we did get a new greenkeeper and he's narrowed the fairways, let knee high rough grow in places, US Open style rough around some greens, and scores have reflected it. Anything close to 36pts now has a great chance. You get the odd 40pts but its only the odd one.