Does your club charge members admin fees for casual rounds?

I think the answer is in your query as I believe most clubs should have an admin fee to discourage casual rounds for handicap purposes and try encourage people to play in club comps, sure isnt that the reason for joining a club

My club has a rule, or had last year anyway, that you can't enter casual rounds on the same day there's a competition. I think that's reasonable enough - I've never actually entered a casual round as I enter lots of comps so I don't know the ins and outs of it - e.g. if you only have time for 9 holes, can you enter 9 hole casual on the same day as a comp. I also don't know how strictly it has been followed

Yea that is a good idea, but some clubs run comps over multiple days. We run Friday-Sunday, so if i enter comp Friday i cant do a casual on Sunday. I would be interested to know the ins and outs of this as Casual rounds are switched off in my club to encourage people to enter comps as they think casual rounds are affecting competition entry, which is not backed up by any data.

Our club has introduced a €5 admin fee for processing a casual round. Crazy decision imo. The lads playing 5 casual rounds in the week in between round 1 and round 2 of Captain's Prize will see the €25 or so as money well spent but it'll put off honest golfers from recording rounds for handicap purposes throughout the year.

Just deal with the problem directly rather than trying a half arsed solution that ends up taking away from one of the only positives about the new system.

I presume it'll be a straight reduction from our competition purse but I haven't looked into it further.

I didn't make the point that everyone putting in casual rounds is hiking up their index Seve.

My point is that this fee has (more than likely) been brought in to try to discourage the people who are hiking up their handicap (I don't think it'll discourage those people) and instead it will probably only discourage honest golfers. Honest golfers will still continue to submit casual rounds but not at the same level as before imo. I certainly won't be paying the fee on principal.

You would be surprised what goes on in some clubs. Our captain's day winner shot a net 61 in round one, played 5 days in a row iirc (or 5 rounds, I think he took a day off but doubled up on another day) of very bad golf and started the final round a week later off a higher handicap than he had before shooting the net 61...

€25 quid won't be stopping that carry on.

But that carry on is why we're paying the €5 fee imo.

The club did something, they introduced an admin fee for casual rounds... joking aside, I'm not sure what was done behind the scenes but even with a manual adjustment, it's very easy for these guys to get back where they want to be soon enough.

they can only go up 5 shots, so slash them back more than this and they can't recover for the entire year, if they do, another cut, and do on

Wonder if participation on comps has declined as a result? That's probably why they're charging to recoup the money lost on comps.

sure that would make it even worse

in this case they try to undo the damage done by the one good round

Not sure how this makes things worse?

I agree on one side that someone could shoot a 61 to qualify and play off the same handicap a week later in the final. But it eliminates the behaviour highlighted by ParLance of someone playing off a higher handicap in the final day then they did in the qualifier by playing a bunch of casual rounds between days.

I doubt these fees are being brought in to combat any handicap manipulation. I would think it’s just clubs looking to generate revenue where they can. Some will need to do this more than others.

As someone above said maybe comp fees are down. Peoples attitude may have changed since pandemic where comps weren’t allowed. I often wonder why a 90 year old who gets out for nothing more than enjoyment with his mates, keeps putting in his 5er comp fee every week when he has about a snowballs chance in hell of winning anything. Maybe now they have just stopped paying in. I play in one place where they have a 2’s comp. But after I got a 2 one day to find out it didn’t count because it was on the wrong hole I don’t enter it anymore.

I’ve no doubt there has always been a lot of lads who nearly never play comps for whatever reason and at least now they can play counting rounds, these clubs are just gouging.

Haven't followed all the posts on this, but I thought that if its the same competition, you play off the handicap you started to competition on ?

Like, you could be off 10 in round 1, shoot a good score, and you still play off 10 in the final round, BUT if you play a different competition on say the Wednesday between rounds, you play off your "new" handicap, no ?

Is there an actual requirement to always submit your casual rounds or is it only for those that you plan to play under competition conditions.

My friend and I usually play a casual 9 on Thursdays but we play more that one ball, don't always finish out, etc

Not for casual rounds no. If you choose to declare the round before you start as counting for handicap purposes then you must submit it. No obligation to declare any casual round though. Its largely to allow people who don't compete in competitions often to have their casual rounds count towards their handicap so that they can keep their handicap accurate and up to date.

I thought it was the opposite and you could only submit a couple of supplementary scores , but under the old rules, they didn’t really want you handing those scores in……. Now there was admin in that!