The Problem With Handicaps...Golfers?
The Problem With Handicaps...Golfers?
Deep into the second full season of its introduction in the UK it’s no longer the “new World Handicap System” but it still gets talked about ALL the time.
Talk to any golfer for more than 30 seconds and the chances are handicaps will already have been mentioned: perfectly understandable as it’s a universal language by which golfers the world over can judge each other. And judge they do.
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"The World Handicap system is the worst handicap system ever. Apart from all the other ones."
Robert Hardie
"The World Handicap system is the worst handicap system ever. Apart from all the other ones."
Robert Hardie
Tell some your handicap is more than 18 and they’ll call you a bandit: tell them your handicap is in single figures and you’ll be told you’re playing too much golf.
Everyone’s got a view on everyone else’s handicap - and it’s almost always that it’s too high - but the one thing you never hear a golfer say is “my handicap’s too high”.
WHS gets the blame, which is ridiculous: how difficult would it be to design a system that manages to gives only one person in the world an accurate handicap but gives every other golfer one that’s too high?
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The problem is averages. For more than 150 years now the system has been revised and revised in search of something that will give an indication of how good a player is or isn’t and attempt to level the playing field in handicap competitions, but players don’t play the same every time they play and competitions aren’t staged over long periods of the time - they’re on the day.
That’s an impossible dream, just like handicapping horses in flat racing: if that worked every race would end in a dead heat for all the horses running, but they never do. Any time someone wins a club competition, especially by a decent margin, the whispering starts: “we need to do something about their handicap” etc. It’s never very clear who are the “right” people to win competitions are, just that it’s not the ones that do.
Gloriously, every golfer is able to play well below their handicap and well above it in any two consecutive rounds: playing below it is why we keep trying, playing above it keeps us honest about how good or bad we really are.
We should be celebrating someone’s success when they win, not tarnishing it.
Why have a Hcps at 100% and then have all the different % to take off i,e 95%, 90%, 85% and so on. Give with one Hand and take back with other. Rubbish!
The main issue with WHS is that it is based around an incorrect starting position imo.
The “average golfer” is not 18hcap which the system is based on. That includes all the upper echelons of golfers who may only be social or part time golfers who have inflated numbers due to their lack of play.
Someone who plays maybe 12 times a year has an average of 22 say, but is more than capable (with a more frequent game) of playing to 12!!
This means the starting point is in favour of the higher handicapper and those more regular players off 15-18 can shoot a round say 25% under their average – 16 minus 25% = 12 therefore scoring 40pts stableford or 4 under medal. Someone who averages and plays off of 4 hcap would have to shoot 100% under their average to achieve the same 40pts or 4 under!!
Much more unlikely.
When high hcap players win with big scores (7 and 8 under are not unusual in my club) they have just had “a blinder” . . . . for that 4hcapper (me) to do that, I have to shoot my best ever score (in over 46yrs) of 3 under gross.
How can that be fair?
I feel the system should have been based on an average of 12 instead of 18 and an education back into he game of encouraging players to be the best they can be not the current “we need to include all” attitude.
The simple fact is, some people are better players than others but are not rewarded for that achievement and are, in fact, punished by the the system.
I know there are allowances in competitions but they still demand full difference in KO’s for example that used to be 3/4s difference to allow for players that make 2 or 3 big mistakes in matchplay but would otherwise score 7 or 8 over instead of their hcap of 16!!!
To sum up – I’m bitter and no longer play to win comps but just to play for the best I can do and satisfy myself with “besting” the course!!
Had a Stewart Golf trolley for over 10 years……play below my handicap it’s effortless….play above my handicap at least I have a trolley to play with to keep me amused.
New WHsystem is much better quicker reductions and increases to signify form.
Not sure I understand the gist of this article, it’s not really saying anything at all about the effectiveness of the WHS!
I personally think the WHS is the very best “averager” we’ve had.
Just as long as golfers record every time they play, that should be a rule such that recent recordings should be a requirement for entering competitions.
As for the multipliers, what nonsense – just keep it the same for everyone and let the handicap indices look after themselves.
I agree in the sense I do not understand why we have a multiplier for slope difference then have to reduce by 5%. Why on earth do we not have a handicap with a multiplier inclusive of the 5% difference to simplify it. Better still just have a simple handicap without multipliers. It seems so complex and fundamentally so simple.