Balancing Tournaments: A Handicapping Thread

General Discussion
#1

@Bigdadenergy This is all your fault…

That’s the tweet! Apparently our friend Zack got some twitter “love” for this hot take… (not as much as that other guy… that guy got gutted, roasted, eaten and then dumped the wrong way in a portapotty…).

I think he has a point, but the overall message lacks nuance. I blame Twitter… I think it’s also important to note that the world of moderately competitive golf is filled with a variety of games, systems and managers… What I do at my local club is completely different than the experience I’d have if I played in a city tournament.

Does handicapping events take out the hard work and skill of the top golfers? Absolutely. It’s called handicapping for a reason… it’s supposed to make the playing field even, regardless of the preparation people have put into it. I’m working very hard to get my handicap down. It won’t help me in my clubs weekend games, but I want to be a better golfer, not get more shop credit during the weekends…

Is there anything wrong with that? I’m honestly not sure. It creates weird incentives, and people who sandbag their handicaps deserve all the scorn they get… but it also means that the person who only plays once a week has a chance to finish “in the money” in their weekend game, and that encourages them to play more golf… maybe eventually enough to be better.

Flighting by handicap probably makes the most sense for “big” tournaments… and it will at least soothe the sting of a 26 handicap shooting a 96 (buddy of mine with ocular degeneration did just that a few weeks back… he’s a legit 26…) and winning everything…

Honestly, I tend not to play much competitive golf for this reason… I’m playing in the club championship (gross score) to see if my game holds up under pressure… but generically don’t play or worry about what other people do on the golf course… If I play in a money game, I assume that money is lost until it gets handed back to me…

Overall, I see Zack’s frustration with net events, but I’m not sure how to keep higher handicap players engaged while keeping things “fair” for the low handicaps… and there are a lot more high handicaps out there! (I think this also creates a bias that high handicaps always win… if there are 50 high handicappers playing, it’s much more likely one of them puts up a “career” round)

#2

I think I mentioned this in another thread, but can reiterate here because I think it was a good balance.

My club had two options for the club championship: The Championship Flight which was played from the blue tees and at scratch. There was also a Regular Flight, which was played from the white tees and players received their full course handicaps. Based on number of entries, there ended up being two flights for the handicapped portion. From what I can tell, this led to good competition among golfers over comparable abilities.

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#3

Net golf is brutal.
I don’t agree with it punishing skilled players as someone who was once a 25 may have put in the same amount of work to get down to a 15 as someone who was a 5 and got to scratch.
From a low handicapper’s standpoint watching someone shoot 5+ shots under their handicap is not only demoralizing it paints a light on that player they are a cheater because the system says that the chances of this are so slim it is almost non existent, yet it happens in almost every event I play in.
There is no real way to fix it except for stricter enforcement of posting of rounds and handicap manipulation. For flighted tournaments the best way I have seen is to flight by handicap and then play gross.

#4

The club champ is the guy/gal who shoots the lowest score in stroke play (played off scratch) from the back tees over at least 36 holes

Nothing wrong with MGA’s doing a bunch of net events but that is not “beating” the low handicap golfers. It’s the difference between winning a football game and covering the spread IMO

That being said I think you can easily handicap a four-ball match and have a great competitive afternoon with money on the line… to me this is so much more engaging than a huge mga event

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#5

There was far more support for my take than opposition, which actually surprised me a bit. There was also A LOT lost in translation due to character limit, misunderstanding, etc. That’s Twitter for you.
The biggest thing I want to make clear - and did so in many responses - is that I’m not trying to make high hdcps feel like they shouldn’t compete or that they’re a lesser human or even lesser golfer. This entire tweet was meant only to shed light on, in my opinion, a flawed way to run competitions.
I don’t think net does anyone any good in terms of becoming a better golfer. All it does is make people comfortable playing at a certain hdcp because they’ve had “success” in leagues and winning shop credit in net events, so they just stay there - whether it’s legitimate or not.
That brings on my next point and it’s obviously not an everybody statement, but we all know it’s a very many statement - handicaps are easily manipulated and people do so freely to fit whichever scenario benefits them the most. We see folks play at a 10 all year, but suddenly two to three weeks before a net event their scores really start to blow up. They come in at an 18 and - oh golly wow got my game back this weekend and fired 79-81 to win by 27 strokes! Great timing!!
Not so great for the +1 who shot 73-69 and “lost”.
Net scoring is unfair to low hdcps. It’s plain and simple. It works in league play. Fine. There really isn’t a better way to do it in league play unless you have 120 people in your league.

The better way to run tournament play is pre-tourney hdcp-based flighting. It’s the most fair way to do it while being open and inclusive to players of all skill levels. The scratch to 5(ish) players can compete against like talent. The 6-10s and so on and so forth.
And to make it even better, tier payouts. I see so many good tournaments pay out the same for winning the Championship flight all the way down to the 7th and 8th flights. This again promotes stagnation and hdcp manipulation.
Payout the most to the Championship flight and drop each flight from there.
Want to win more? Improve! Don’t we all want to get better? Don’t we all like winning shop credit? What better way to have incentive to do both?

Stop trying to “level” the playing field. A +2 and a 25 are not level nor should they be competing against each other directly in tournament play. It’s not good for either of them to be paired up.

Saturday money game and league play - do whatever you want. Net works there - tho I have many more opinions on max scoring, max bumps per hole, etc.

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#6

For us when results were posted, the winner of that championship flight was CLUB CHAMPION. The others were noted as flight winners, and there were no arguments I’m aware of.

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#7

I said this on twitter, but I think the problem with what you are suggesting is it will turn off a larger number of players who don’t actually want to get better at golf… How many people do you know who have actually taken the time and lowered their handicaps? It’s HARD to do it past a certain point, and even in your proposed system, the rewards for it aren’t that great…

Short of starting a podcast and getting sponsored by Titleist, there isn’t a ton of upside to getting to a scratch handicap… then again, I don’t play many competitive rounds and only care about my score for my own reasons.

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#8

I guess I don’t see how competing against people of similar ability is a turn off. Even if you don’t want to get better, is being a 20 playing against other 20s a bad thing? And if so, what about it is bad?

I do agree there’s a large number of golfers who don’t want to get better - but why, then, do those people want to compete? There’s plenty of space in golf for fun only rounds. Beer leagues, scrambles, benefits, etc. Is it just to win shop credit? Well, they can do that from the 5th flight, too. Is it to say they “took down” better players? Well - no they didn’t.

People will say it’s to see how they do versus their “normal” score. Well, if you’re a 16 and shoot +13 you can still do math and know you shot a couple better than you normally do. What does calling it net 69 versus gross 85 do? You shot 85. If that’s better than you usually do, awesome. Find joy in that. Calling it net 69 doesn’t change what you shot.

Here’s the real problem that no one wants to say, but I’m not afraid to…

The reason many (not all) high hdcps want a full field net event is because it’s easier to cheat. It’s a lot easier for a true 15 to falsely enter scores to get to a 22, then shoot mid-low 80s and win a net event than it is for a plus to 5 hdcp to falsely inflate their hdcp then come in and shoot 70-71.

People will buy a 22 having a “career” weekend shooting 85-85. They won’t buy a “7” having a career weekend shooting 70-71.

That’s it. And it’s sad.

And if that’s not it, then why do so many have such a problem just playing gross in a field of equal talent? - and to avoid hdcp inflating there, let’s do play in qualifying. I’ve played a lot of tournaments that have a play-in round or rounds to determine flighting. Come out on your own time with a scorer, play, turn in your card, then you’re flighted based on that.

Why are people so afraid of their actual score?

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#9

To me it’s very simple:

In any given net match (1v1), the player with less variance in their score will win more often - this is almost always the lower handicap. The handicap system favours lower handicaps in match play. This has been documented countless times despite the anecdotal objections from lower handicap players.

However, In a large field net tournament, things change, The winner is likely to be someone with larger variance in scoring (usually high handicappers). Imagine a net tournament with a million players. Even if everyone’s handicap is legit, the winner will almost certainly be a high handicap who shoots the round of their life and posts net 15-under or something ridiculous like that. A high handicapper is far more likely to shoot exceptional scores than a low handicapper.

The flip side is that the worst net score in a tournament is very likely to be a high handicapper as well, but there’s no real difference between finishing middle of the pack or last in an amateur events.

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#10

Nailed it!!

The system is perfect for four ball imo (believe you use 80% of course handicap in that format)

It just doesn’t scale well in the larger events. To @Bigdadenergy points, the large mga events feel a lot like a charity scramble to me because of this dynamic… that doesn’t bother me, it just is what it is. I play in these events to network at the club, there is no “competitive juice” for me.

Now get me a $50 four ball nassau that is well handicapped and I will be in the competitive zone!

#11

I think it just serves a different crowd at the club…

Most of the sandbaggers would trade their gambit to actually be able to strike the ball like you @Bigdadenergy

#12

This is absolutely impossible under the new WHS handicap system, with soft and hard caps on handicaps.

I’ve read studies that suggest the low handicap players get rewarded in similar percentages to their participation. But there will always be a lot more 15 to 20 handicaps than 0 to 5, so those more populous groups will generally take home a larger share of any purse.

Agree completely. The problem comes with the aforementioned numbers of players in a group. Do you want to make up flights with similar numbers of players, or specific ranges of handicaps?

But is this fair? Just taking my home club as an example, a Championship flight might really only have 4 or 5 guys who can realistically win, and a handful of posers who think they can compete but really can’t. A flight of 15 to 20 handicappers might have 20 players. Do you suggest that the Championship flight should make more money for beating 3 other guys, while the mid-handicap net flight winner should make less, when he needed to beat 4 or 5 times as many real competitors?
I don’t think there’s a single “right” format for larger field events. I do think the suggestion by the USGA to use 90% of handicap for larger fields helps make it more fair for all. I do think that flighting events helps, but comes with its own issues. Just for background, I’m a 4.6 HI, I’ve worked on my clubs Tournament Committee, on the Handicap Committee, and I’m beginning what could be a “retirement career” in rules officiating.

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#13

I think I have said this before. Our Association keeps a USGA and the pro also keeps tournament handicaps to prevent sandbagging. We just had the first round of the Club Championship and also the Age Group Championships and it goes something like this. The Age Group Championships goes by obviously…Under 50, 50-60, 61-69 and 70 and over. That is done using your Association Handicap. One round! The Club Championship is 2 rounds. It is the Top 8 Gross scores from the Back Tees regardless of age group…2 rounds. Best Gross score wins! I actually think that’s pretty fair. Pretty tough to Sandbag and you are not allowed to enter your score into the GHIA…the pro does that for all association tourneys. He keeps all association scoring on an exel spread so like 2 weeks ago I played a guy who is a 17 in GHIA system, but in the association tourneys…he is a 10.5. Go figure. I played him also in matchplay and beat him 4 and 2. If we didn’t use the association caps I lose 1 up. So yea it is a big difference when people don’t report correctly. I mean you could legit win 4 figures throughout the season…do you think it matters to some people if they say they are a 20 and then play to a 7? So yea it’s a problem and it’s up to your association to manage it…Just my 2 cents

#14

I also don’t see how flighted tournaments would be any better for sandbagging. You’ll still have the 2-cappers masquerading as 8-cappers so they can play in a lower flight.

#15

because we keep tourney caps…we don’t go by USGA for them…your USGA could be 30…so what…your association tourney cap is 10. That’s what we go by.

#16

The best net event I play in is a guy’s bday party. He handicaps the event himself and has 25 years of data from his buddies at that course… individual net stroke play with calcutta the hour before tee off

He plays in a monthly league that 80% of the the participants play in and he keeps handicaps for that league (only league scores count, I believe there are some minor ESC adjustments as well)

New comers are pretty severely penalized… you won’t have an opportunity to win until you have played 2 or 3 years in the event…

Also there are two random payouts for 1) middle of the pack finisher and 2) 3rd to last which keeps people pretty honest in terms of playing the rounds out

I would say that the winner is almost always playing the best round in the last 12-24 months vs their card and winning score is really consistently something like net 66 (4 under)

Edit* there are mulligans associated with beer drinking so most players will get 2-4 mulligans so the 4 under par net feels about right from my perspective

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#17

I don’t see this alot… I see lots of 8’s playing as 12 or 14’s though

Edit* this may happen more in tourneys with huge Calcuttas… i tend to stay away as i think this is where almost all the egregious cheating takes place

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#18

I assume you are exaggerating for effect but how does someone end up with a big gap between their official handicap and their tournament handicap and not get shunned as a cheater?

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#19

There are groups, clubs, leagues, whatever, with a culture of cheating. There are others with a culture of honesty.

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#20

Isn’t there a limit on how much a HCI can go up in a single year to stop this? In the UK we now have HCI’s over 28 and I find the stableford competitions are now all won by players with higher handicaps. I remember a guy I was playing paring a 4 and receiving 3 shots. Net hole in 1!! I at best get 1 shot per hole, no chance of competing.

My main playing partner is a solid golfer but without fail has at least one 8 and one 9 on very round. The rest all 4/5/6’s This makes him almost unbeatable in stableford as he plays off 34!!!

For me the HCI should go back to being capped at 28.

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