Deceptively Short

Under the old CONGU system the CSS (the old equivalent of PCC) frequently went up at tough links courses. We have a local one where many of our members are members there too , and many competition days days it was reduction only i.e. the most extreme level of change where irrespective of your play your handicap would not increase. All of us over here know that playing links golf on a tough day is really, really challenging and the difference in scoring between a good and tough day on a UK links course is far greater than on a parkland course. This is obviously difficult to represent on the

As these ‘lip protectors’ do not conform to the rules of golf, should rounds played with them in the holes be posted for handicap purposes or not?

As people have said, over here in CONGU land, in reality, tournament only handicaps are the norm. We have a thriving culture of ‘Open’ competitions at all clubs. This is when members of other clubs can play competitions at other clubs in various formats. I, and all my playing partners, are more than happy to play in such competitions both at my own club and elsewhere and believe we have a relatively fair and equal chance of winning if you play well, which is in essence the purpose of having handicaps in the first place. This is certainly the case in singles strokeplay slight less so in bet

It’s ironic in a cruel way as most Scottish courses where play is allowed are under snow and ice where courses down here in the South West have dried out and are fine but we are not allowed to play. Clubs are having to decide whether to have green staff in at work getting more winter work done quicker as there are no golfers in the way or sending them home and the government paying 80% of their wages.

I realise that ‘more qualifiers will be played in ‘playable’ conditions’, my question was to do with playing ‘qualifiers’ in unplayable conditions and the amount of discretion a committee will have. This question is now unfortunately moot as we are now in lockdown again and it may well be Spring before we are back out on the course - it looks as if we have had an inactive season imposed on us!

Good to know - thanks Newbie

The competition committee would check scores and close the competition as usual but the question is whether it should be deemed by the competition committee ‘in the competition settings’ as a ‘qualifier’ i.e. qualifying as a WHS score.

No we don’t have an ‘active season’. In the winter months we have more allowances on ‘postable’ rounds such as the ability to have LCP at the Club’s discretion and the use of fairway mats (this is often the case in more northerly links courses). Otherwise if we run a competition with an acceptable course set up score should be posted and you can pre register individual strokeplay attested rounds again if the course is set up in an acceptable fashion. As we live on an island seasons are unpredictable, as someone said we don’t have a climate we just have weather.

We run 'Qualifying Competitions' (rounds which must be posted) throughout the winter. On rare occasions the course is frozen and if the frost is hard enough it is considered that playing on the proper greens does little or no damage, is we keep the main greens on and don't move to temporaries which we would use in light frosts. Historically if the greens were frozen on a competition day, due to the total lottery of the golf that was able to be played (it is impossible to hold greens with forced carries), we just made it a 'fun' competition and it was non qualifying for handicaps. Wit

I have heard on here that some folks from the US would favour (favor) two handicaps, one based on competition rounds or pre-registered, attested singles stroke play rounds (what we would call over here ‘serious golf’) as used in many parts of the world, and another index based on other formats e.g. better ball and strokeplay rounds. The above post seems to show this to good effect as the player has two widely different indexes, 4.3 and 9.1 dependent on how the rounds are calculated. It goes to show how difficult it is to handicap everyone in a lot of different formats and ways of playing.

Surely the aim in matchplay is to make a better score than your opponent on each hole not to make the best (possible) score.

Interestingly ‘no see’ socks would get you thrown off many UK courses. A (very) few now insist on long socks, just below the knee, with shorts but a surprisingly amount still require white ankle socks and no ‘trainer’ socks. Don’t ask me why. I always keep a pair o& ankle socks in the car when visiting other courses just in case.

I was referring to ‘you’ i.e. not CONGU when I said in my post “over there” meaning the USA (but it, of course, also refers to other jurisdictions). I realise that net par here in CONGU land is relatively meaningless without additionally factoring in CR

With CR-Par being part of the course handicap calculation over there doesn’t ‘playing to your handicap’ i.e. shooting net par now mean equalling the course rating net?

I’m not sure how this will work under WHS but normally anyone, over here, who plays ‘regularly’ to handicap in medal competitions is not necessarily a ‘sandbagger’ but would certainly require watching.