Is WHS fit for purpose

Don't even know what problems were trying to fix anymore.

What does it matter.

1. Potential 54 handicap. Just.......no. No. That's not golf. Not even close.

2. Potential to increase handicap within a year by 5 strokes. Jesus lads get off the stage. Excuse. "But I'm not competitive unless I've more shots" Go practice ffs you're not entitled to it just because.

3. Casual rounds counting for handicap. Yeah.............No. Casual rounds are for fun, gimmes, playing for a fiver, mulligans, enjoying the views, fresh air, dropping a ball down, holiday golf. I'll focus on Saturday thanks. Or Wednesday 9 hole singles. Otherwise I'm just out there after work relaxing. Don't want a card in me hand for that.

Tat all sounds like a rant. And ye know, in my club, generally, the winning score is much the same as always. I don't care for the majors or the medal or the whatever people deem to be worth winning. Every singles comp is the same for me. Unless it's a scratch cup among your peers, I might take that more seriously, mind you those days are long gone.

So WHS or Congu or whatever it was called before. Not one bit of sleep I'd be losing over the margins of either. Just enjoy the game for what it is.

Yes, but that's your choice to do that. For me, i want to be competitive all the time. I want to play counting rounds for my handicap everytime I go out, as long as i have a.) the time and b.) the playing partners to sign my card for me.

So seves round from lastweek was a 1 in 37000 chance 🤔

One of the things that I hadn't thought about wrt casual counting rounds is that a lot of five day members put them in in our club. And that makes sense when most of the comps are at weekends.

Quite a useful exercise to go through those against your own scores. I just did it on my 180 odd WHS scores and found that I was ~11 times under par net. All of them in the white zone on that table. That's 1 in 16 roughly (and I did a rough count, so could have missed a couple). And I didn't count 9 hole scores either. One thing I did note was that the majority of those scores were achieved on other courses from my home course. Which (although I know, correlation is not causation) might bear out the notion that slope ratings aren't that accurate.

My WHS

Handicap Index 12.3 Low Index: 9.0

Membership Number:

Home Club: Tramore You are in the top 23% Tramore

24% Waterford

19% Ireland

Last Updated: Today

I knew it. Poor olde Waterford.. only honest h/caps s in the country😆

Just read this on WHS https://irishgolfer.ie/latest-golf-news/2022/11/28/what-is-wrong-with-the-irish-golfing-mentality/

A rambling, sentimental, poor article in my opinion. Picks on minority, edge cases and no data to support any of it.

We call them gilligans. In our friendly matches you get 1 mulligan and 1 gilligan per 9.

Mulligans only off the tee and you can’t mulligan a gilligan but you can gilligan a mulligan 😀

Obviously this is just for major amateur competitions but is it almost an acknowledgement that the system of including general rounds in the handicap index doesn't work that well? It seems like it me to.

I think it is probably too much for clubs to do something similar for major competitions like Captains prizes, Medals, etc but it is interesting.

Hmm this will be interesting ok.

I'm not clear if it will apply to both better or worse scores although the Golf Ireland does seem to be specific: In the event that an entrant has more than four general play scores on their record and where their General Play Scores are significantly better than those in competition, (ie, more than two shots better on average) their entry will be reviewed by the Championship Committee. 

It seems to be designed to prevent golfers who have better general play scores to lower their handicaps.

Implication is that it's easier to manipulate a better score in general play than competition. Not sure if that's the case.

In my experience of reviewing scores for the AHR, most general play scores are returned on away courses and are worse in general than competition scores which are mainly on the home course. This should be expected I guess due to familiarity with ones home course.

It's a lot more than a handful. Dozens at a minimum

While it is what it is as you say. It is by default rewarding mediocre golf and penalising consistency..

Results at my home club are showing up multiple scores in the mid 40's every week.

They are not bandits or sandbaggers from my knowledge of them but competent golfers who went through poor scoring spells and ended up with inflated handicaps in relation to their true abilities/potential.