Who is the better golfer?

willabur · 03-06-2014 04:21PM #1

I mentioned this on the last round you played thread but thought it might get more eyeballs with its own thread.

Question is simple enough. We have two golfers who consistently shoot the same(ish) gross score. For arguments sake they both shoot 90 on a par 72. Player one shoots 18 bogies, player 2 shoots 9 pars and 9 double bogies.

Who is the better player? or would they have the same handicap?

Boskowski · 03-06-2014 04:30PM

willabur wrote: »

I mentioned this on the last round you played thread but thought it might get more eyeballs with its own thread.

Question is simple enough. We have two golfers who consistently shoot the same(ish) gross score. For arguments sake they both shoot 90 on a par 72. Player one shoots 18 bogies, player 2 shoots 9 pars and 9 double bogies.

Who is the better player? or would they have the same handicap?

theyd have the same handicap.

But in both cases it would be much better than 18. Anyone who can play 18 holes without a scratch shouldn't be off 18. Anyone who can play 18 holes without a double should be low single figures.

So the hypothetical scenario doesn't make a lot of real world sense but yet I think I understand where you're going with it.

The guy with the fewer bad scores is the better golfer I think. Anyone can bomb out a string if pars even the odd birdie by taking high risk shots (high risk wrt their handicap). For amateurs good golf is mostly about consistently avoiding bad scores rather than scoring a few low ones.

PARlance · 03-06-2014 05:23PM

I don't know how I could say.

Initially I would have thought that the 9 pars guy is showing more potential as I just assumed the doubles were coming from mental errors.
I also had the 18 bogeys guy down as being someone who makes a GIR +1 more often than not... A steady, medium hitter that plays his way around the course well.
But there's a lot to consider.
You could have so many variations of both types of player tbh.

e.g The 18 bogeys guy may be just as good a ball striker but he may just be a horrible putter.
With a bit of putting practice (in this eg) he could be a single digit golfer in a short space of time...

I think most people will assume 9 pars guy to be a better ball striker but is someone who has poor course mgt or has mental lapses.
Whereas people may assume 18 bogey guy to be a steady eddy, possibly a shorter hitter that just keeps it in play.

I'd like a little bit of both.

And I'd bloody love a round without a scratch or 3

blue note · 03-06-2014 05:45PM

They're equally good. Golf is a sport where you can make all the excuses you want, but how good you are can be defined by a number - your handicap.

In soccer or rugby or hurling you can talk about a guys positional sense, scoring ability, number of passes or whatever you want. But in golf it's about how many shots you take, pure and simple.

Russman · 03-06-2014 08:49PM

blue note wrote: »

They're equally good. Golf is a sport where you can make all the excuses you want, but how good you are can be defined by a number - your handicap.

In soccer or rugby or hurling you can talk about a guys positional sense, scoring ability, number of passes or whatever you want. But in golf it's about how many shots you take, pure and simple.

100%
Furthermore its how many shots taken over 18 holes, not a hot streak of 5, 6 or 9 holes !

alxmorgan · 03-06-2014 09:23PM

I agree they are effectively the same as the score is all that counts. However the question of potential for future improvement is an interesting one.

I read an article recently that would suggest that if one was significantly longer than the other the longer one would have more potential. Guess the thinking is that most things can be improved with work but the hardest thing to add is swing speed.

So if 9 pars guy is getting these pars as he is much longer but also wilder the article would suggest he is more likely to go lower.

GreeBo · 03-06-2014 09:35PM

alxmorgan wrote: »

I agree they are effectively the same as the score is all that counts. However the question of potential for future improvement is an interesting one.

I read an article recently that would suggest that if one was significantly longer than the other the longer one would have more potential. Guess the thinking is that most things can be improved with work but the hardest thing to add is swing speed.

So if 9 pars guy is getting these pars as he is much longer but also wilder the article would suggest he is more likely to go lower.

he is likely to have a better one off score, I'd disagree that he is likely to go lower.
They guy who doesnt have doubles ever is more likely to have a few extra pars and get cut imo.

BoardsMember · 03-06-2014 10:49PM

Gosh this makes hard reading because its so true. I'm the guy who goes low once or twice a season and is never in the buffer. I have myself believe I'm better than other higher handicaps but now I'm not so sure. I need to cop myself on and concentrate on playing with consistency, remove the doubles and worse. If I shoot 24 points that is as much a reflection of me as my 40 points. Too much gin.

alxmorgan · 03-06-2014 11:09PM

GreeBo wrote: »

he is likely to have a better one off score, I'd disagree that he is likely to go lower.
They guy who doesnt have doubles ever is more likely to have a few extra pars and get cut imo.

Could be. Or could be that the guy with no doubles will always be too short to reach most par 4s in regulation and is therefore going to stay pretty much where he is within a few shots.

The longer guy can tighten up his game and then can reach everything in regulation and so has potential to go lower. Not saying I agree with it but that is the theory put forward.

Right know I'd defo rather be Mr NoDoubles

p_mac · 03-06-2014 11:20PM

I think the 9 pars guy is the better golfer here, and if playing off 18 is defo miss handicapped!

Any player that's fit to make 9 pars a round consistently, is well capable of tidying up 2 or 3 of those doubles and is gonna loose shots quickly!

A guy that's consistently getting bogey on every hole would suggest they have a little further to go in terms of overall improvement...

Just my opinion of course....

GreeBo · 03-06-2014 11:22PM

alxmorgan wrote: »

Could be. Or could be that the guy with no doubles will always be too short to reach most par 4s in regulation and is therefore going to stay pretty much where he is within a few shots.

The longer guy can tighten up his game and then can reach everything in regulation and so has potential to go lower. Not saying I agree with it but that is the theory put forward.

Right know I'd defo rather be Mr NoDoubles

Why do you assume steady Eddie is short rather than good course management? On the days where he gets a few putts he will break par and probably feature, on the other days he will be within his buffer.

For me one of the greatest myths of the high handicapper is along the lines of "I'm a much better golfer than my handicap shows" all this born out of a few birdies or eagles somewhere along the way.

Amateur golf is about consistently scoring within or better than your buffer and getting your handicap down.
Week in week out I hear the lament of the high handicapper.... "I hit the ball so much further than that oul fella and we are the same handicap...its ridiculous"
The majority of long fellas who spray it everywhere do this and will always do this because thats how they think you play good golf. Golf is not football, the crazy free overhead kicks that dont work out do penalise you, you have to go find it and take your next shot from wherever it ended up.

/rant!

GreeBo · 03-06-2014 11:24PM

p_mac wrote: »

I think the 9 pars guy is the better golfer here, and if playing off 18 is defo miss handicapped!

Any player that's fit to make 9 pars a round consistently, is well capable of tidying up 2 or 3 of those doubles and is gonna loose shots quickly!

A guy that's consistently getting bogey on every hole would suggest they have a little further to go in terms of overall improvement...

Just my opinion of course....

Why is he mishandicapped? I think we are all assuming that they play equal competitions and submit all scores correctly.
Your handicap is your handicap. A few great shots here and there are no good to anyone. Your total score shows how good or bad you are, not how you shot them or any individual shots in between.

p_mac · 03-06-2014 11:49PM

I agree that the final score is the one that counts, and agree there are no pictures on a score card and all of that!

OK, you're right... he's not mishandicapped as I stated! but I would still argue that the guy able to shoot nine pars consistently is not gonna be off 18 for long! Put it this way if I had to play doubles with one of em, I'd be picking 9 pars man!

But a different game I realise of course...

ForeRight · 04-06-2014 12:02AM

If 2 guys in question handed in 3 cards each with those exact scores when playing for a handicap who would get the lower one?

The guy with 9 pars would because he has more ability.

GreeBo · 04-06-2014 08:45AM

ForeRight wrote: »

If 2 guys in question handed in 3 cards each with those exact scores when playing for a handicap who would get the lower one?

The guy with 9 pars would because he has more ability.

Define ability for me then?
Ability in golf is returning a good score for 18 holes, in amateur golf it's doing this consistently to get a lower handicap.
It's not random great shots interspersed with random horror shots.
Golf is about how good your bad shots are, anyone can have great good shots.

Henry Ford III · 04-06-2014 09:06AM

They are both distinctly average.

ForeRight · 04-06-2014 09:16AM

GreeBo wrote: »

Define ability for me then?
Ability in golf is returning a good score for 18 holes, in amateur golf it's doing this consistently to get a lower handicap.
It's not random great shots interspersed with random horror shots.
Golf is about how good your bad shots are, anyone can have great good shots.

In golf terms I would define ability as the potential to score lower than your cards show.

If your score is all that matters and not the way in which you gather that score why when handing in cards off 100 do you not get a handicap of 28.

IMO there is far more to gauging someone's ability than just reading the number after 18 holes.

Would you say someone who has a 90 with 18 bogeys is of the same ability as someone who has 90 with two or three birdies a bag load of pars and a couple of tens?

There's more to it than just the final score for me anyway. That's just my opinion and I accept the argument from your side.

Russman · 04-06-2014 09:49AM

ForeRight wrote: »

In golf terms I would define ability as the potential to score lower than your cards show.

If your score is all that matters and not the way in which you gather that score why when handing in cards off 100 do you not get a handicap of 28.

IMO there is far more to gauging someone's ability than just reading the number after 18 holes.

Would you say someone who has a 90 with 18 bogeys is of the same ability as someone who has 90 with two or three birdies a bag load of pars and a couple of tens?

There's more to it than just the final score for me anyway. That's just my opinion and I accept the argument from your side.

I agree with both of ye !
I think Greebo's question of "define ability" is actually the key to the whole notion of a handicapping system and one that arguably hasn't really been answered fully. Different systems the world over have tried and probably not come close. For sh1ts and giggles I plugged my scores for the last few years into the US system to see what handicap I'd have been and, granted without course ratings, I was consistently a couple of shots lower than my GUI.

Its a massive topic. Should there be a subjective element to judging someone's ability ? If there should, who is qualified to judge ? That brings a whole area of bias into it.
If there shouldn't be a subjective element, that allows sandbaggers to simply put the numbers down on the card with no questions asked.

I've no idea what is "correct" tbh. I do think the card should be favoured though, because if someone is indeed sandbagging, their one or two good scores will automatically mean cuts and its in a sense self-correcting, albeit with a time lag. Simply looking at a card and saying ".....well you had 8 pars and 3 birdies so you should be off x handicap....." doesn't seem right to me because a round is all 18 and you can't just forget about the bad holes. Its all very well to say if he could only cut out the 3 disaster holes he'd be off x, but equally that's like saying if I'd only birdied the last 3 I'd have shot level par, ifs and buts can't really carry as much weight IMO.

I was listening to a Karl Morris CD recently and while it wasn't directly related to this topic, he was talking about your score and comparing golf to soccer where if you have 2 goals in a match, they're never taken away from you, you might lose, but your goals stand. As opposed to golf, he asked if you are 2 under par after 9, are you really 2 under ? and if you think you are 2 under, you should try walking in and declaring your score as being 2 under, a la declaring the innings in cricket. I thought it was an interesting analogy. But I think it illustrates that we should be careful not to put too much weight into parts of a round or a string of holes when judging ability.

I also think ball striking ability is often confused with golfing ability at club level. How often do we hear "he drove the 12th, and he's playing off 15" with no mention of the duffed chips or shanked irons or yipped putts.

alxmorgan · 04-06-2014 11:03AM

GreeBo wrote: »

Why do you assume steady Eddie is short rather than good course management? On the days where he gets a few putts he will break par and probably feature, on the other days he will be within his buffer.

For me one of the greatest myths of the high handicapper is along the lines of "I'm a much better golfer than my handicap shows" all this born out of a few birdies or eagles somewhere along the way.

Amateur golf is about consistently scoring within or better than your buffer and getting your handicap down.
Week in week out I hear the lament of the high handicapper.... "I hit the ball so much further than that oul fella and we are the same handicap...its ridiculous"
The majority of long fellas who spray it everywhere do this and will always do this because thats how they think you play good golf. Golf is not football, the crazy free overhead kicks that dont work out do penalise you, you have to go find it and take your next shot from wherever it ended up.

/rant!

I assumed he was purely to take the conversation in the direction of that article. Of course he may not be. As I said I'm not saying I agree with the notion. Just throwing it out there

willabur · 04-06-2014 11:06AM

For the record I am the guy who consistenty bogeys his way around the course. I would say I average at least 13/14 bogeys per round. I am also a reasonably big hitter and can reach most holes in regulation. My issue is mostly with accuracy. I don't capitalise on good fairway position, don't get close enough to the pin to have birdie opportunities. Usually have a putt for par which lags and I tap in for bogey

GreeBo · 04-06-2014 12:30PM

ForeRight wrote: »

In golf terms I would define ability as the potential to score lower than your cards show.

Isnt that potential ability then though?
And equally, doesnt the bogey man have the potential to be a great player, if her could just hit it a bit further?

ForeRight wrote: »

If your score is all that matters and not the way in which you gather that score why when handing in cards off 100 do you not get a handicap of 28.

There is a big difference between assigning an initial handicap and two people playing off the same handicap over a long period of time. By definition, if they are both playing off 18 and have been for years, they are both of the same golfing ability.

ForeRight wrote: »

IMO there is far more to gauging someone's ability than just reading the number after 18 holes.

Would you say someone who has a 90 with 18 bogeys is of the same ability as someone who has 90 with two or three birdies a bag load of pars and a couple of tens?

Yes I would, because in golf you measure ability via handicap.

ForeRight wrote: »

There's more to it than just the final score for me anyway. That's just my opinion and I accept the argument from your side.

I accept your opinion too

blue note · 04-06-2014 12:36PM

Russman wrote: »

I also think ball striking ability is often confused with golfing ability at club level. How often do we hear "he drove the 12th, and he's playing off 15" with no mention of the duffed chips or shanked irons or yipped putts.

This is a particularly true line. At two ends of the spectrum, I played with a guy off 21/22 who creamed a few shots, but deserved his handicap. He could comfortably make lots of par 5s in two ... in theory.

I also play with a guy who was off 6 a while ago as well. It was about 5 or 6 holes before I realised that he was a low handicap golfer. Quite a few shots I thought bordered on mi****s, but still went reasonable distances and straight. He didn't have fancy chips that shoot along the green and then just stop - he just rolled the ball to the hole. But, he tipped along making pars, bogeys and wasn't far off a couple of birdies. I'd confidently say I was a better ball striker than him, but he was a better golfer than I'll ever be.

alxmorgan · 04-06-2014 12:43PM

blue note wrote: »

This is a particularly true line. At two ends of the spectrum, I played with a guy off 21/22 who creamed a few shots, but deserved his handicap. He could comfortably make lots of par 5s in two ... in theory.

I also play with a guy who was off 6 a while ago as well. It was about 5 or 6 holes before I realised that he was a low handicap golfer. Quite a few shots I thought bordered on mi****s, but still went reasonable distances and straight. He didn't have fancy chips that shoot along the green and then just stop - he just rolled the ball to the hole. But, he tipped along making pars, bogeys and wasn't far off a couple of birdies. I'd confidently say I was a better ball striker than him, but he was a better golfer than I'll ever be.

Played with a guy in Mullingar once off 6 and tee to green we were almost identical ( I was off 17 at the time). His long game was unremarkable at best. If I missed a green he missed it too etc etc. But he got up and down all day long.

I played well that day (for me) and had 39 points. Think he had 37 so I guess I "beat" him but sure didn't feel like it as I saw him sink yet another putt

ForeRight · 04-06-2014 01:30PM

GreeBo wrote: »

Isnt that potential ability then though?
And equally, doesnt the bogey man have the potential to be a great player, if her could just hit it a bit further?

There is a big difference between assigning an initial handicap and two people playing off the same handicap over a long period of time. By definition, if they are both playing off 18 and have been for years, they are both of the same golfing ability.

Yes I would, because in golf you measure ability via handicap.

I accept your opinion too

Ok we will just agree to accept each other's opinion,

I've learned the hard way not to get drawn into debate with yourself

michael1930 · 04-06-2014 11:46PM

They will both have the same handicap as they always return the same scores, this is obvious and uninteresting, but the question asked in the title of the thread is a v interesting one.

If you change the question slightly you might ask which of these two is more difficult, to have 9 pars in a round and 9 bad scores or to keep a double bogy off your card. I think the latter is far more difficult and I believe it also indicates where handicap golfers, who want to improve, should focus their attention.
I think good handicap golfers dont necessarily play more good shots\holes, they just play fewer bad ones.

p_mac · 05-06-2014 12:14AM

@ Willabur

If your ball striking is good, distance etc. and accuracy is letting you down that's what you need to work on. Like, in terms of accuracy are you missing on the right or the left? If you're a bit loose with the approach shots, and it's consistently going one way or the other it might be as little as an alignment tweak required. Might be beneficial to get someone to take a look at you...

Get that sorted, say your on nine greens in reg and the putting goes well all of a sudden you're the nine pars guy!

Just don't take the nine doubles like him and you're sorted!

ib_sanf · 05-06-2014 10:51AM

To throw another spanner in the works - I'd regard the fella who shots 90 - at a good pace, staying in position - as the better golfer.

I personally don't rate any golfers score/handicap if they take 45 mins to an hour more than they should to play 18 holes.

GreeBo · 05-06-2014 11:06AM

ib_sanf wrote: »

To throw another spanner in the works - I'd regard the fella who shots 90 - at a good pace, staying in position - as the better golfer.

I personally don't rate any golfers score/handicap if they take 45 mins to an hour more than they should to play 18 holes.

Playing at pace is etiquette, not ability.

ib_sanf · 05-06-2014 11:20AM

If the player can maintain their score while playing with etiquette - their ability is proven

GreeBo wrote: »

Playing at pace is etiquette, not ability.

GreeBo · 05-06-2014 11:36AM

ib_sanf wrote: »

If the player can maintain their score while playing with etiquette - their ability is proven

Huh?

So by that logic 99% of the Pro golfers on tour have un-proven ability...

Panrich · 05-06-2014 11:54AM

I'd definately qualify as a bad golfer by any definition (never broke 100). My ball striking is poor (improving a bit), my distances are woeful (never reach in regulation). I can sometimes get a par or even the odd birdie on short holes but my fundamentals (besides chipping and putting) are too bad to ever allow me to become a good golfer. There is no point even going for a handicap mark because I would never get over 30 points with my 'game'.
That is the difference that people should be looking at when deciding who is the better golfer. If someone has the basic fundamentals to hit more greens in regulation than his peers then he should be the better overall golfer in my view. GIR means that you are able to keep the ball in play and are accurate enough with your approaches. Which of the two mythical golfers would hit more GIR is a good question? A guy who shoots bogey golf would need to 3 putt every hole if he was to hit GIR every time.

Who is the better golfer?

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