Your New WHS Index

By what you're saying, you had few enough scores before changeover. So they might have added the adjustment to bring your calculated WHS index in line with your CONGU handicap. The calculation also takes in adjustments applied by the committee - I've copied a similar adjustment and you can see it comes directly off the calculated score differential.

The score differential is calculated in the normal way and then the adjustment is applied.

I only had 5 scores in last year. the last 2 of those were 2 decent rounds. based on those 2 rounds i went from 14 to 10 in the old system.

(2 shots based on the standard scratch, 1 shot for ESR, and a further 1 shot for GPR applied by the committee)

You said earlier that you had them added recently. I suspect that the adjustments were applied so that the addition of those scores wouldn't change your current WHS index. But I'm only surmising here, you'd need to ask your h/cap sec.

Well I suppose the first question is did your handicap index change when those old scores were added? If not, that's what the adjustment was for.

No low index set would just mean that you don't have a soft or hard cap (and obviously don't have 20 scores in yet) - second question is whether you have produced scores that would put you past either and third question is whether you have a score that would attract an ESR - which wouldn't be affected by the presence or absence of a low index. And an ESR would only be for a max adjustment of 2 anyway.

No the addition of the extra 5 score was not affecting my index much (a change of + 0.5) so it wasnt making much difference - i only wanted them added so i could to the 20 rounds quicker and have a more accurate handicap. the cut of 7 on those differentials has resulted in my index dropping from 8.2 to 3. Very severe in my opinion and to be honest a bit embarrassing as im nowhere near that level.

in The app my 8 best score differences add up to 54.2 so when you divide by 8 for my index i reckon it should be 6.8 but it showing as 8.0 on the app any ideas why?

The 8 in green in the app add to the 54.2 which gives me 6.77 buy the index says 8.0 on the app. I was expecting/hoping to be in the 6s really

Its kinda hard to say for sure without seeing the scores. I presume you definitely have 20 scores or more ?

Just read it 😁

WHS needs to be revised. There is no point in any single figure/honest golfer playing in comps anymore

Up to 10 now off our whites!

Also a High handicapper golfer, off 25 say, only needs to have a double bogey free round to have a great score. someone off 10 trying to compete with that needs to go around in +3 gross. Presuming the 25 gets no pars.

Don't worry too much, there'll be plenty of guys playing off 10 next year who can go around in level par.

Some just through a bad spell of golf, but many others are working their way up.

The handicaps can go up to much to quick. It opens it up to all sorts of hi-jinks. Something needs to be done, but we can’t go back to the old way, so we need a fair compromise.

So before you handicap was rolling, every round counted, be that a cut or a .1 back. Now it is basically the average of you best 8 cards out of your last 20 rounds. With 3 years worth of scores being on your live record.

the current cap is 5 above your lowest HI in the last 12 months.

To keep with the best 8 idea I think a fair cap would be limited to 3 higher than average of your best 8 scores on record (ie 3 years)

keeps it current, but also keeps manners on anyone who thinks they can just stick in a few stinkers so their handicap will shoot up.

I also wonder how many scores are these people putting in. That score of 55 nett in Tramore (by my calculations) was by someone with less than 20 scores in their WHS. I know at least one club that exclude members with less than 20 WHS calculated scores from winning their Captain's Prize.

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but with regard to sticking in a few stinkers, isn't the flip side also true in that they're gone again off your record fairly quickly ? For, say, a retiree who plays 3/4 times a week, its probably only a month and a half. I'm hopefully well off retiring just yet, but had a back to back 42, 40 & 35 points last week - under CONGU I'd have lost 2.0 plus a ESR of another shot. That would take me 3 years to get back if I was that way inclined. As it is it's only been a net reduction of 1.4 and when a few other scores drop off my record shortly, unless I keep playing well I'll be back where I started or higher.

I think we're all at times still thinking of WHS and sub consciously comparing to CONGU. To me, WHS is more a measure of your current "form", whereas CONGU was a measure of your "level" (whatever that might be !) - I know that might sound odd but it makes sense in my head anyway :D

By its nature of counting all rounds equally, as opposed to only being able to go up on 0.1 increments previously, I think its going to be easier to get low but harder to stay low over the longer term. If the old CONGU research that showed golfers were only supposed to play to their handicap once every seven rounds is true (and presumably golfers haven't changed even though the system has), there's going to be a lot more bad rounds than good ones on your record and I think our handicaps will be much more volatile but probably in much smaller increments.

I know, like seemingly everywhere, we're seeing much higher scores needed to win each week but the spread of winners is much greater than previously. Maybe thats the new normal, I dunno.