Golferdad9

I’m not sure it implies the same thing for every kid. A kid living in Wisconsin playing locally obviously won’t have a great SOF. I would think a college coach would dig in a little bit to suss out why the SOF is what it is but I guess I don’t know that. In terms of rankings it doesn’t seem to be a huge determining factor. The rankings are much more sorted on differential than they are on SOF. I’d assume you’d want to get the appropriate level of competition for your kid given constraints of budget, time, skill level, etc and just let the SOF take care of itself. In reality given the nature of the CCE I’d be MUCH more impressed if a kid can get a huge differential playing lesser competition. If a kid can somehow get to a -7 playing 6700 yard courses rated 72 that never get adjusted up his SOF will suck, but that would be one damn good golfer. Not sure how many others see it that way though.

I’m sure it’s just a technical issue. JGS has been doing it for a much longer time than TUGR they’re probably just a lot better at it. I’m sure it’s a s*** ton of manual labor it’s not exactly a super lucrative business where you can just hire folks.

For all my criticisms of JGS above I will say that a perusal of the Junior Am WAGR exemptions shows how much worse it could be. There are kids from Asia that WAGR says could crack the lineup at University of Florida while JGS says they might not crack the lineup at Benjamin. These aren’t kids with 4 tournaments over here either. One kid in particular has a WAGR ranking of 157 with a JGS ranking in the 400s LOL. Something there doesn’t add up. He has 17 JGS counting tournaments too so it’s not a case of small sample size.

One way of testing everyone’s suspicions would be to have a really large field with some of the best players in the country and also players in the 300-700 range. Have them play the same course and run the strength of field adjustment algorithm on cross sections of the group. Theoretically the adjustment should be similar for the 1-30 group as it is for the 300-700 group and also similar for the entire field. After all they all just played the same course. You could probably run this experiment with the Junior Am. What’s the adjustment look like if we look at it as if only the top 50 players were in the field? What’s the adjustment look like if only the bottom 50 players were in the field? Is it similar as the adjustment formula for the entire field? JGS could give out the adjustment formula, amateur statisticians could take various cross sections and see if they can find a bias evident. Not a statistician but I believe those sample sizes would be large enough to effectively study it. If you did it over many years you’d absolutely be able to come up with valid conclusions. It’s a tiny sample size and not nearly as apples to apples a study as the Junior Am one, but there was an AJGA Invitational and a FSGA event at the same course earlier this year. At the Taylor Made Invitational in May the Streamsong Black course had adjustments of 4,3 and 4 from a base of 74.7 (played at 7249 yards) at the FSGA State Championship on the same course a little over a month later there were adjustments of 0 and 0 (from a base of 73.4 played at 7034 yards). I know there are plenty of explanations for the discrepancy in adjustments and I don’t have the weather for each day. Assuming it was similar I’m sure the JGS defenders would say, “It’s not a bias in the algorithm AJGA just sets the course up much harder than FSGA.” Most of the parents I know in Florida would laugh at that. Very small sample size I know but it is interesting and might point towards these parents having a valid point.

It’s funny that this was the original reasoning because anecdotally based on my experience it absolutely does not do this. I guess it would be pretty easy to pull the data and see if adjustments are higher in Texas in March or up north in April and May vs AJGAs or AJGA invitationals. I know in Illinois kids are very reluctant to play in crappy weather months because they know the adjustment won’t come close to capturing the conditions. Frequently there are no adjustments at all for these tournaments up north. Part of this might be throwing out the top 10% of players which is what it seems he’s doing based on the podcast. A typical IJGA event has 100 kids maybe 5-10 with an extensive AJGA schedule and maybe 1-2 playing AJGA invitationals. Those 10 kids could theoretically prove how hard the course is relative to AJGA ratings but their score is being thrown out. That doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the methodology though. IMO Mac needs to accept the wisdom of crowds a little better. If all these parents are spending tons of money traveling and inconveniencing themselves to play a national schedule because they think JGS is biased they’re probably not all fools. They’re probably correct.