Your New WHS Index

Use of Median from the array of 8..

Average is terrible...

I don’t have any data, but my gut instinct / understanding of how numbers work, is that when we have already removed the outliers (so it’s only best 8 from last 20), then for the vast majority of golfers, the difference between mean and median would be less than a stroke.

How much would your handicap change by if you used median instead of average? My handicap is 12.2 and would increase to 12.7 if calculated using median instead.

My index is currently 5.7 , if median was used it would drop to 5.5

I looked at this 2 years ago in my club and found that the winners were distributed more or less according to the distribution of handicaps. I did a quick scan back over the 18 hole competitions on Monday and Wednesday this winter and found a reasonable distribution of winners too. Yes, there were a few mid 20s but also low teens and single figures.

What do you consider higher handicap players?

I looked at almost a years worth of corballis Sunday singles scores in 2023 (up to the middle of November or so). If I remember correctly, the average winning score was about 39 points. And the repeat winners were the single digit lads. One lad who started and finished the year on 4 won 18 prizes between top 3 overall, cat 1 and gross. That's crazy to me. But in corballis category 1 is single digits, so some weeks probably didn't have many in it at all.

I don’t understand clubs that don’t use auto balancing for comp categories. If there are 120 playing, there should be 40 in each category. Let the comp software work out the handicap range for each.

I was just going to ask how many entries were in cat 1 because that's a phenomenal level of consistency. Would be interesting to see the bad scores and general play cards over the year also.

Interesting conundrum.

Cant really see how the club could do anything else really as the system only works that way unless somebody was physically going to check the card for each member.

Tough on your mate but thems the breaks I guess.

Sounds correct, like in pro tournaments they often have two tee starts. Or a shotgun start in something like LIV. But I think the back 9 still remains as such regardless of what order the course was played.

My understanding is that there are no set rules for countbacks and the competition committee have a lot of leeway in setting them. There are recommendations in the appendix of the rules book which most clubs follow.

The answer to this would be found in your club's Terms of Competition. The wording would be important. "Final 9 holes" vs "Back 9" or "Holes 10-18" could produce a different result when everybody tees off from the 10th.

Pretty sure they don't have a 12 hole card.

I thought alright there was something but can't remember properly

https://irishgolfer.ie/latest-golf-news/2025/03/19/golf-ireland-to-launch-world-handicap-system-campaign/?mc_cid=37c9e4276c&mc_eid=9631517e94

Clubs can choose to have competition handicap between 85% and 100% of course handicap.