Your New WHS Index

Came up against a couple of fellas that benefited from the WHS for interclub. Player A previously scratch got a HI of 5.3 and B previoulsy 5 got HI 11.1.

We were playing them in a match, 4ball betterball. I've never seen Golf like it from Player A. he had 3 birdies and an eagle, and player B had 4 birdies. We got to the 16th and lost 3&2. there was a couple of putts that would have dropped we would have kept with them but not to be.

Surely this is negligence by the Handicap committee that it didn't adjust these guys back down closer to what they were previously playing off?

Those golfers must have wanted to be off those handicaps as well though. Cant blame the handicap secretary for it all. When applying an increase in handicap, the sec is supposed to talk to the player about it. I can tell you I would hate to be given an 11 handicap so if the 5 wanted out to there knowing hes better than that handicap then he has a lot to answer for.

Still, they only won on 16 with 8 birdies and an eagle, so you and your partner must be better than your handicaps also

From reading what you're saying it seems to me that the new system worked exactly as it should have here. Say the guys you were playing were playing off their old handicaps, despite 7 birdies and an eagle between them, it looks on the face of it that the result would've been reversed with you winning more or less on the 16th too and that's not including those putts that you said could have dropped.

How negligence could be claimed is beyond me, their current handicaps couldn't be a fairer reflection of their average ability seeing as its based on a mathematical formula. Everyone is going to have good rounds and bad rounds, it was just unfortunate for you in this instance that those guys were maybe playing slightly beyond their HI on that day.

New system makes it easier to manipulate handicaps.

I'd like if they looked again at the slopes. Our slope is 125 off the whites and 128 off the blues. So I get an extra shot off the blues but the blues adds around 450 metres extra to the course and it's probably closer to 4 shots harder than the whites.

And that is the big issue really. I suppose we just aren't used of the big jumps. Maybe i am too quick to judge, I have been looking at my own scores.

My low this year is 7.4, currently 7.8. In 8 rounds if I don't get my form back, which I have lost from the start of the year,(6 round in the 70's got me down) I'm going to jump up to 11. To someone looking at my record it will look like i have gone out on purpose, they don't know my form. To me when I look at it its frustration as I'm still hitting the ball well. Old system I would be getting to max 8.4 this year, which i would prefer because that's my goal, but it wouldn't be a reflection of current form i suppose.

What do you mean by conditions?

Be kind of weird to have that incorporated into the slope ratings surely?

PCC?

3 shots

That certainly doesn't sound like enough to me.

I think the average round is something like 32 points, or was under the old system anyway. On a Sunday where the weather is bad (in which we'll have a few every year, so I'm not taking about that 50 year storm in point break or anything) you can have fewer people with over 30 points than under 20. Certainly the average score will be far more than 3 shots lower than a normal day. In which case, I think the score differential should reflect this.

I would have thought taking it out of the hands of the club would be the smart way of doing it. You'd need a minimum number of competitors for the average score to mean something. But say you had 50 guys in a field and the average score was 30 points. Whereas the average score is normally 32 points, put an adjustment of 2 onto the score differential.

Obviously you can make the computation more complex, maybe you should take out the outliers or something, but I would have thought basing it on the numbers would be the most accurate way of calculating it.

from https://www.whs.com/articles/2019/playing-conditions-calculation.html

When abnormal course or weather conditions cause scores to be unusually high or low on a given day, a Playing Conditions Calculation (PCC) will adjust Score Differentials to better reflect the player’s actual performance. This mechanism works by a statistical procedure which evaluates acceptable scores submitted each day and compares them to the expected scores of those players. The PCC is calculated automatically, so there is no additional work for players or club administrators.

Since scores made each day are used to determine if an adjustment is needed, it is important that players submit their scores on the same day of play. The PCC is designed to be conservative and generally won’t result in an adjustment unless there is strong evidence to suggest it is necessary. Adjustments will range between -1.0 (when the golf course is playing easier) and +3.0 (when conditions are more challenging) and will be applied within the Score Differential calculation.

By including a Playing Conditions Calculation, the World Handicap System recognizes that a high score in harder playing conditions may be better than a good score submitted in easier conditions. This helps to ensure that the Handicap Index of each player will continue to reflect their demonstrated ability, regardless of the conditions in which they play.

What do people think, is this fair? In my view it's not. On a bad day you could have a fella win a comp with 35 points. Out of 100 competitors that was the best score, it might be 10 shots better than the average. But if he's off 18 it will go down as a score differential of about 16. When on a normal Sunday comp he might need a score differential of closer to 11 or 12 to be top of 100 other guys.

A bit more than anecdotal evidence I did a comparison of our results last year compared to this year.

The median handicap for players in the top 3 has increased by 6 shots.

And for players in the top 5, single digit handicappers accounted for 15% last year and has dropped to 2% this year.

As a single digit player myself I felt that players around my level were largely unchaged by the new system. I was 9.4 old and 8.6 new so playing off 9 either way and could see that trend among a lot of single digit players. All the extra shots seem to be in the higher end where a bigger variance plays a larger part I guess