Handicap and Solo Rounds/Rounds with kids

[Superbrit]

1 hour ago, mshills said:

I don’t understand this comment….it’s anecdotal at best, but my experience is for every sandbagged cap there are ten times as many vanity caps, and if someone wants to carry a vanity cap, so what? 
 

I can’t think of a good elegant solution here. Someone in my situation who has a highly variable and jam packed schedule — I’m going to take every opportunity to squeeze rounds in, and more often than not, they are solo at odd hours.

 

I play with one arm. I play my ball down, and I putt everything out. Someone in Far Hills NJ says I cannot post those scores and keep an honest index? GTFO. I post every single one, and my conscience is totally clear. 

You may do, but there will be many who don't, it leaves it open for "interpretation", and that's the issue

 

But i do agree when you say about American vanity caps, ive played with at least 20 American guys and in my experience they wasnt even close to what they were claiming, well not what i would expect from a UK standard anyway, but did it bother me, of course not, leave them to it

Edited May 30, 2022 by Superbrit

[Superbrit]

1 minute ago, Superbrit said:

You may do, but there will be many who don't, it leaves it open for "interpretation", and that's the issue

 

But i do agree when you say about American vanity caps, ive played with at least 20 American guys and in my experience they wasnt even close to what they were claiming, well not what i would expect from a UK standard anyway, but did it bother me, of course not, leave them to it

 

[Bonneville85308]

On 5/27/2022 at 6:49 AM, larrybud said:

The usga is seemingly stuck on this belief that all golfers belong to a country club, with a handicap committee, who reviews posted scores. It's crazy.

 

Yep, I've been saying this for years. I remember when, for the most part, you couldn't get a GHIN # unless you were a private club member or part of a "men's club" at a select few public courses in each state.  It looks like they've been starting to open their eyes a little in recent years, but for decades the USGA seemingly had the belief that all golf (or only what they cared about) represented the private club environment common near their Far Hills, NJ HQ. Sure, you can now get a USGA handicap through many public courses, even signing up online through a course you've never even been to, but I'd be willing to bet that the "handicap committee" at most of those public courses is the pro or manager and not actually a committee that ever reviews anything. 

[North Butte]

They don't actually believe that peer review takes place for the majority of golfers. They just pretend to believe it because that enables them to keep taking money from millions of GHIN subscribers while saying "Peer Review" or "Committee" every time someone points out that most of the scores entered into the system every day are pure fantasy. 

[larrybud]

On 5/28/2022 at 8:57 AM, North Butte said:

There are about 50-75 members of my club who play together 2, 3, 4 times a week in rollup games. They post all the scores and those scores represent 90-95% of the golf they play each year. That's pretty much exactly the market the USGA system was built to serve way back when and really not a lot of changed for that core market.

They basically decided back in the 1980's that they'd rather be a one-size-fits all handicapping service for everyone from their traditional club-based market right on up to the folks who want to post their once a week solo rounds to "track their progress". For whatever reason they seem to want to backtrack to something halfway in between the original, very limited system and the wide-open one they created 30 years ago. 

 

I'm not sure when or what changed 30 years ago in regards to handicaps. I do remember in my teens posting my scores on the sheet in the proshop (at a public muni) and that was mid 1980s. I also remember when "slope" was introduced (had to look it up... 1987).  There's no way they had peer review then either. I never turned in scorecards or any such thing. I played golf with my dad, and wrote our scores on the sheet. 2 weeks later you get a handicap update. I mean, it's a MUNI. They had an old guy in the pro shop and some maintenance workers.

 

 

[North Butte]

1 hour ago, larrybud said:

 

I'm not sure when or what changed 30 years ago in regards to handicaps. I do remember in my teens posting my scores on the sheet in the proshop (at a public muni) and that was mid 1980s. I also remember when "slope" was introduced (had to look it up... 1987).  There's no way they had peer review then either. I never turned in scorecards or any such thing. I played golf with my dad, and wrote our scores on the sheet. 2 weeks later you get a handicap update. I mean, it's a MUNI. They had an old guy in the pro shop and some maintenance workers.

 

 

It was probably more gradual and goes back farther than I had known. I didn't start playing golf until the early 90s but when I "joined" a semi-private course (really just a subscription type deal) a couple years later I remember thinking that was a big bonus, being able to get a USGA handicap.

 

Around here it seemed like around 1997 or 1998 was when there suddenly (or so it seemed) were more options for "clubs without real estate" or getting a handicap through some sort of online deal. 

 

But you're right, the move to open it up beyond true private clubs goes back way farther than 30 years.

[Newby]

1 hour ago, larrybud said:

 2 weeks later you get a handicap update.

 

 

Weren't handicaps in the USA only updated every fortnight or twice a month some years ago?

[North Butte]

55 minutes ago, Newby said:

Weren't handicaps in the USA only updated every fortnight or twice a month some years ago?

It was twice a month up until very recently (couple years maybe?) and I think my earliest memories of having a handicap involved monthly updates, way back when.

[Augster]

Every day updates in the USA came in with the WHS 1/1/20. 
 

So it has only been around, here, for 2.5 seasons. 

[RCGA]

The problem with the no-solo-rounds rule is that you shouldn't have a golfer showing up to the course not knowing if the round is going to "count" or not. 

 

I'm a member at a private club and play early in the morning. It's not a popular time and no-shows and last minute cancellations are frequent, especially early and late in the season. If the round is nothing more than practice, I'd rather go to the range to be completely honest. 

[North Butte]

10 hours ago, RCGA said:

The problem with the no-solo-rounds rule is that you shouldn't have a golfer showing up to the course not knowing if the round is going to "count" or not. 

 

I'm a member at a private club and play early in the morning. It's not a popular time and no-shows and last minute cancellations are frequent, especially early and late in the season. If the round is nothing more than practice, I'd rather go to the range to be completely honest. 

I have a hard time getting my head around your concept that a round of golf is only worth playing if it's going to result in one more score typed into GHIN. I play golf because I enjoy playing, that enjoyment is not affected in the slightest by whether the score going into an app afterwards. 

 

[RCGA]

To each their own. Playing a (legit) solo round knowing it doesn't "count" isn't exciting to me. The whole notion that I can't post it because solo golfers can't be trusted is off-putting. 

 

[davep043]

1 hour ago, RCGA said:

The whole notion that I can't post it because solo golfers can't be trusted is off-putting. 

Then disabuse yourself of that particular notion.  Handicaps are intended primarily to allow somewhat fair competition.  Competition means playing with, and against, other people.  It is absolutely logical that only scores played with other people should count in calculating a number that is used when playing with (or against)  other people.

[RCGA]

If I'm a 3hcp and I see someone's a scratch, the first thing I think of is "oh, that's a good player". I don't think "....that's 3 shots in a competition". 

 

Maybe it was just the way I grew up. Handicaps tracked improvement. Competitions (that mattered) were all gross events. 

[davep043]

44 minutes ago, RCGA said:

Maybe it was just the way I grew up. Handicaps tracked improvement. Competitions (that mattered) were all gross events.

That's the way many low-handicappers grew up, the world of competition was always gross.  But for the rest of the golfing world, a large majority of all golfers, the only way they could really compete was using handicaps.  

[larrybud]

1 hour ago, davep043 said:

Then disabuse yourself of that particular notion.  Handicaps are intended primarily to allow somewhat fair competition.  Competition means playing with, and against, other people.  It is absolutely logical that only scores played with other people should count in calculating a number that is used when playing with (or against)  other people.

The logic doesn't fly. Just because I'm paired with someone doesn't mean I'm competing against them, nor does it change how I play vs when playing solo. As stated before, many times the people I'm paired with have no idea what I shot, and whether the score I'm posting is even close to accurate, but hey, I can (must) post it.

 

I'll also guarantee you that the vast majority of people who have handicaps don't play in any kind of competitions ever, and those people only have handicaps to simply track their own progress.

[North Butte]

19 minutes ago, larrybud said:

The logic doesn't fly. Just because I'm paired with someone doesn't mean I'm competing against them, nor does it change how I play vs when playing solo. As stated before, many times the people I'm paired with have no idea what I shot, and whether the score I'm posting is even close to accurate, but hey, I can (must) post it.

 

I'll also guarantee you that the vast majority of people who have handicaps don't play in any kind of competitions ever, and those people only have handicaps to simply track their own progress.

I do not think Dave was offering any support the current idiotic USGA notion of posting rounds played while your kid is riding along in the cart. That rule is just stupid window dressing for purposes of internal golf governance politics. 

 

The original intended purpose of handicaps are 100% totally, literally, precisely to allow golfers of different skill levels to compete with roughly equal chances of winning. It's the essence of the concept, it's what all those weird formulas are designed to do.

 

Sure, lots of people appropriate the USGA Handicap System as some sort of deeply meaningful measuring stick for their own self-image. That doesn't mean the rules of the system ought to be set up to do anything other than actual handicapping of competitive games. 

 

If you need a measuring stick for your "progress", there are far better ways of doing it than best 8 out of 20 differentials with net double bogey max and all the other rigamarole in the USGA's formula.

 

I prefer to compare myself to other golfers by measuring height, as it turns out. 

Edited June 2, 2022 by North Butte

[larrybud]

2 hours ago, North Butte said:

I do not think Dave was offering any support the current idiotic USGA notion of posting rounds played while your kid is riding along in the cart. That rule is just stupid window dressing for purposes of internal golf governance politics. 

 

The original intended purpose of handicaps are 100% totally, literally, precisely to allow golfers of different skill levels to compete with roughly equal chances of winning. It's the essence of the concept, it's what all those weird formulas are designed to do.

 

Sure, lots of people appropriate the USGA Handicap System as some sort of deeply meaningful measuring stick for their own self-image. That doesn't mean the rules of the system ought to be set up to do anything other than actual handicapping of competitive games. 

 

If you need a measuring stick for your "progress", there are far better ways of doing it than best 8 out of 20 differentials with net double bogey max and all the other rigamarole in the USGA's formula.

 

I prefer to compare myself to other golfers by measuring height, as it turns out. 

But you continue to ignore my original example of playing solo, vs playing with a stranger, with one score being invalid and the other being valid. Dave seems to defend that notion, that me playing with this stranger has some effect on my game, as if one score is more valid than the other.

 

As far as a measuring stick, it's a predefined one. Most people don't have the knowledge, smarts, or time to develop their own measuring stick (let alone a convenient app), so they use one which is readily available and cheap.

[North Butte]

5 hours ago, larrybud said:

But you continue to ignore my original example of playing solo, vs playing with a stranger, with one score being invalid and the other being valid. Dave seems to defend that notion, that me playing with this stranger has some effect on my game, as if one score is more valid than the other.

 

As far as a measuring stick, it's a predefined one. Most people don't have the knowledge, smarts, or time to develop their own measuring stick (let alone a convenient app), so they use one which is readily available and cheap.

I'm not ignoring, I'm agreeing with you 100%. The USGA's is being idiotic in the extreme by treating a non competitive round in the mere presence of a third party as somehow different than any other solo round. Even moreso given there's no provision for that third party to even be identified, much less attest the score in some manner. 

 

And I have not read Dave's comments as defending that stupid rule on its own merits, he is trying to excuse it as some politically expedient halfway point that he believes USGA to consider necessary (for reasons I can't fathom) before some indefinite future rule allowing only attested, competitive rounds to be used.

 

I'm on record as saying I don't believe USGA will ever go to a system that uses only attested competitive rounds. Dave feels otherwise (if I have correctly understood his many comments over the last couple years). 

 

But nobody on this forum, as far as I can recall, has actually defended the "post if your kid is riding along in the cart" principle as being any other than laughably bad. 

 

 

[RCGA]

1 hour ago, North Butte said:

But nobody on this forum, as far as I can recall, has actually defended the "post if your kid is riding along in the cart" principle as being any other than laughably bad. 

 

Does playing with a kid make the round any less legitimate than playing with, say, a first timer adult? 

 

Playing with Michelle Wie at age 10 (when she played in the US Am) wouldn't count. But playing with my wife who doesn't even know the rules of golf is fair game? 

[ThinkingPlus]

5 minutes ago, RCGA said:

 

Does playing with a kid make the round any less legitimate than playing with, say, a first timer adult? 

 

Playing with Michelle Wie at age 10 (when she played in the US Am) wouldn't count. But playing with my wife who doesn't even know the rules of golf is fair game? 

You can post with kids or your wife just not alone.

[North Butte]

4 minutes ago, RCGA said:

 

Does playing with a kid make the round any less legitimate than playing with, say, a first timer adult? 

 

Playing with Michelle Wie at age 10 (when she played in the US Am) wouldn't count. But playing with my wife who doesn't even know the rules of golf is fair game? 

It's equally stupid telling people to post rounds with ANYONE who is not another golfer competing with or against the person posting the score. 

 

Can I possibly make that any clearer? I believe I've stated it in various ways several times in this thread already. 

 

When they used to tell you to post solo rounds, that was a serious, major flaw in the system. They improved it somewhat by saying not to post solo rounds but making an exception for wives or kids or other non-golfer is still a serious, major flaw in the system. 

 

 

[Augster]

2 hours ago, North Butte said:

I'm not ignoring, I'm agreeing with you 100%. The USGA's is being idiotic in the extreme by treating a non competitive round in the mere presence of a third party as somehow different than any other solo round. Even moreso given there's no provision for that third party to even be identified, much less attest the score in some manner. 

 

And I have not read Dave's comments as defending that stupid rule on its own merits, he is trying to excuse it as some politically expedient halfway point that he believes USGA to consider necessary (for reasons I can't fathom) before some indefinite future rule allowing only attested, competitive rounds to be used.

 

I'm on record as saying I don't believe USGA will ever go to a system that uses only attested competitive rounds. Dave feels otherwise (if I have correctly understood his many comments over the last couple years). 

 

But nobody on this forum, as far as I can recall, has actually defended the "post if your kid is riding along in the cart" principle as being any other than laughably bad. 

 

 

I agree. 
 

I believe only rounds while competing should be posted. Said another way, if someone else in your group cares if you play good or play bad, cares if you take a foot wedge, or don’t count a penalty, post that round. It could simply be for bragging rights or “trying to beat the old man”. It doesn’t always have to involve gambling. But if you’re playing for money, you are certainly competing. I know I am. 
 

You know when you are competing. When competing, post it. When not competing, don’t post. 
 

I’m hoping that is the next iteration of posting requirements under the WHS. It’ll make all the “I played with 3 random people I should be able to post that round” people mad. So be it. Do you want to post the round? Start up a conversation on the first tee and get a game going. 
 

 

[DaveLeeNC]

23 hours ago, Augster said:

I agree. 
 

I believe only rounds while competing should be posted. Said another way, if someone else in your group cares if you play good or play bad, cares if you take a foot wedge, or don’t count a penalty, post that round. It could simply be for bragging rights or “trying to beat the old man”. It doesn’t always have to involve gambling. But if you’re playing for money, you are certainly competing. I know I am. 
 

You know when you are competing. When competing, post it. When not competing, don’t post. 
 

I’m hoping that is the next iteration of posting requirements under the WHS. It’ll make all the “I played with 3 random people I should be able to post that round” people mad. So be it. Do you want to post the round? Start up a conversation on the first tee and get a game going. 
 

 

 

That is an interesting concept - the 'informal competition requirement'. There is some logic here. How would that logic analyze the four person team game situation where you are clearly competing but the nature of the competition actually incentivizes cheating (cheating helps your playing partners) rather than having a tendency to control it (where at least some of your playing partners have an incentive to keep you honest). 

 

dave

[Augster]

2 hours ago, DaveLeeNC said:

 

That is an interesting concept - the 'informal competition requirement'. There is some logic here. How would that logic analyze the four person team game situation where you are clearly competing but the nature of the competition actually incentivizes cheating (cheating helps your playing partners) rather than having a tendency to control it (where at least some of your playing partners have an incentive to keep you honest). 

 

dave

Honesty is a given in the WHS. 
 

Since you are competing against other teams, post the round. 
 

Our mens club literally does this every other weekend in our events. I’d say 3/4 of our events are ABCD events randomly drawn. 
 

In golf, we call penalties on ourselves, and on others, to protect the field. 

 

 

[Golferpaul]

On 5/23/2022 at 7:09 PM, Augster said:

Post those rounds. 
 

Solo rounds have been outlawed for many years now. 

I would question that an eight-year-old who doesn't "know enough about golf to have any idea what I'm doing out there" would qualify as a person "who may also act as a marker".

 

• In the company of at least one other person, who may also act as a marker (subject to satisfying any other requirements of the Rules of Golf),

So, I would say the rounds with kids are not postable.

[davep043]

45 minutes ago, Golferpaul said:

I would question that an eight-year-old who doesn't "know enough about golf to have any idea what I'm doing out there" would qualify as a person "who may also act as a marker".

 

• In the company of at least one other person, who may also act as a marker (subject to satisfying any other requirements of the Rules of Golf),

So, I would say the rounds with kids are not postable.

The rule requires one other person, nothing more.  The other person may do other specific tasks, but thats not a requirement.

[Augster]

4 hours ago, Golferpaul said:

I would question that an eight-year-old who doesn't "know enough about golf to have any idea what I'm doing out there" would qualify as a person "who may also act as a marker".

 

• In the company of at least one other person, who may also act as a marker (subject to satisfying any other requirements of the Rules of Golf),

So, I would say the rounds with kids are not postable.

Post it. 
 

“Who MAY”. The key word is “May”. They could be a marker, or they could be on their phone the entire way around. 
 

There is no marker requirement, nor attestation required, for posting rounds in USGA WHS. The only requirements are you play by the ROG and are with at least one other person. 
 

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

On 6/2/2022 at 4:49 PM, RCGA said:

 

Does playing with a kid make the round any less legitimate than playing with, say, a first timer adult? 

 

 

I'd say that playing with my son--who is 14 and a novice, but actually playing golf alongside me trying to make his best score possible--makes my round less legitimate. As his father, and with him being new to the game, my attention is divided between focusing on my own round and trying to help teach him all the ins and outs of golf etiquette, of how to manage a round, and all the other things a father does for his son... I usually score worse with him than when I'm playing with buddies and only have to focus on myself. 

 

I should play with him more often. You can't accuse me of sandbagging for spending quality time with my son, right? 😉

 

[Golferpaul]

1 hour ago, Augster said:

Post it. 
 

“Who MAY”. The key word is “May”. They could be a marker, or they could be on their phone the entire way around. 
 

There is no marker requirement, nor attestation required, for posting rounds in USGA WHS. The only requirements are you play by the ROG and are with at least one other person. 
 

 

I don't agree with your opinion.  So, you are saying I could play with a 2-week-old baby and post the score?  That's silly and violates the spirit of not posting when playing alone.

 

Why have a rule against posting a round played by yourself at all if you can post when playing with a baby?

Edited June 15, 2022 by Golferpaul