handicap committees

Every golf club in a state association using GHIN is supposed to have an active handicap committee. I am unfortunately on my club committee. Purpose of this post > I am looking for feedback and best practices from others on such committees. Below is a summary of our basic operations. We have a communications group and a data group. The communications group handles all the membership notices and general GHIN compliance. The data committee attempts to validate member golfers are in compliance with GHIN score posting rules. We try to validate/reconcile tee times w/ scores posted. However, its super difficult. Our club uses Jonas which is useless. They also use Golf Genius for events which is just as useless.

We have sandbaggers. They are like filthy roaches.

So, how does your club ensure GHIN posting and member golfer compliance? We want to monitor without it becoming a full time job. Our golf shop is not interested in collecting scorecards for daily play. I don't blame them.

It is my understanding that if you adopt Golf Genius for all of the club member's play at your course (not just have the course use it for a few tournaments) it can be set to automatically post ESC-adjusted scores to GHIN. And since "signing in" for tournament play is required prior to starting play, one can check to see that those who at least started a tournament have had a score posted (or be questioned as to why they didn't).

(This is second-hand information which I hope is accurate.)

> @Sawgrass said:

> It is my understanding that if you adopt Golf Genius for all of the club member's play at your course (not just have the course use it for a few tournaments) it can be set to automatically post ESC-adjusted scores to GHIN. And since "signing in" for tournament play is required prior to starting play, one can check to see that those who at least started a tournament have had a score posted (or be questioned as to why they didn't).

>

> (This is second-hand information which I hope is accurate.)

I have heard Golf Genius has daily play features for tee times etc which would allow the player to use the app for score keeping and then GHIN posting. However, Jonas tee time management is also the POS point of sale for daily fee billings, so if this course potentially integrated and customized Golf Genius into their Jonas portal/application they would still have to keep Jonas data synced with Golf Genius data to ensure proper member billing.

But you are correct. If that was an option our lives would be much easier.

Sandbaggers are always gonna impact the daily games, and if they want to cheat idk what can reasonably be done. What you CAN do in club events that matter (Member Guest, Member Member, Match Play, etc.) is establish a “Tournament Index” that is based on how they have played in past events of this type. It will require some manual work, but it will greatly reduce the likelihood of sandbagging. The Golf Channel AmTour does this and it works quite well.

For anyone who lacks scores from previous tournaments, I’d allow them to play at a fraction (75-80%) of their handicap, and explain this is done to protect the field.