MD/VA/DC Golfers - Ten Seconds or Less

[baddomes]

Big fan of how the 7s are referred to as the NGB7s by default.

[eagle1997]

jkc-rva - i already know your next question.

 

here's the answer.

 

[TheCityGame]

1) Thanks Nerf.

 

2) The differentials so far have been pretty interesting. I've never totally liked the Knuth table of odds of exceptional scores. I think we're seeing a lot more "exceptional scores" than he would predict. I can into more detail on this when I feel like it.

 

3) The weekend of August 20th/21st, I have the PR Club Championship, The Queenstown Event, and my Dad'd Member-Guest. I'm going up for the member guest, but that's a very frustrating combo. The Q-Town -- at some point in recent history -- was the 27th.

 

4) I have NO issue with the TBD7's handing out trophies for other events. DCGT has events on the 1st and 15th, so I could shoehorn it on on the 8th, but I'm thinking, I might be more likely to push it to the 22nd or 29th. I don't want to exclude too many DCGT people who might be using too many "Hall Passes".

[therealsneek]

That's a great week of golf right there! I played the South course at Firestone a couple of years ago and while I definitely enjoyed it I'm not sure that I would spend the $$$ to play it again.

 

Diamond Run Golf Club in Sewickley? I grew up south of Pittsburgh and played in a few junior tournaments there. I looked forward to playing there as the course was always in great shape and it was a fun layout.

 

Enjoy your week.

 

Re: The South Course, everyone I know who has played it said the same thing. It's nice, but not exactly worth the $. Maybe some day.

 

Yep that's the Diamond Run. Parents moved to the north hills after my younger sister graduated from high school (Upper St. Clair) and joined. It's a good typical western PA course.

 

Where did you grow up?

 

I grew up in Waynesburg and then went to Pitt for undergrad. I was living in the southside and then moved down here in January for a new (read better) job. Plus my girlfriend is from Frederick so it was a good move.

[eagle1997]

sorry about that city. the 27th wasn't even a sunday, so there was all kinds of wrong going on there.

[jhbangas]

Speaking of low differentials, we're all signing up for the Summer Solstice tournament at Laurel Hill, right???

[eagle1997]

Speaking of low differentials, we're all signing up for the Summer Solstice tournament at Laurel Hill, right???

 

there's still spots.

http://www.golfstylesonline.com/GS16_SolsticeRegistration16.html

 

my brittle body couldn't take it tho. :(

[baddomes]

I'm doing the golf decathlon next year

[jhbangas]

What's my course handicap for that tournament? +2?

[FAbb]

The differentials so far have been pretty interesting. I've never totally liked the Knuth table of odds of exceptional scores. I think we're seeing a lot more "exceptional scores" than he would predict. I can into more detail on this when I feel like it.

 

That all kind of assumes you've reached your max potential though, right? I mean certainly somebody who is actively improving and dropping their handicap is ripe to shoot some low net differential rounds.

[GooseHook]

The differentials so far have been pretty interesting. I've never totally liked the Knuth table of odds of exceptional scores. I think we're seeing a lot more "exceptional scores" than he would predict. I can into more detail on this when I feel like it.

 

That all kind of assumes you've reached your max potential though, right? I mean certainly somebody who is actively improving and dropping their handicap is ripe to shoot some low net differential rounds.

 

Nice, I only have to play 201,110 more rounds to break 70.

 

Eagle, what email are you talking about?

[GooseHook]

I vote that THDC must wear a malliot jaune in all of his future matches, to assert his dominance over the leaderboard.

[eagle1997]

Eagle, what email are you talking about?

 

"upcoming summer events" from DCGT email. might have gone to spam.

[GooseHook]

Eagle, what email are you talking about?

 

"upcoming summer events" from DCGT email. might have gone to spam.

 

Oh, my work wifi blocks gmail. Dumb s***.

[TheCityGame]

The differentials so far have been pretty interesting. I've never totally liked the Knuth table of odds of exceptional scores. I think we're seeing a lot more "exceptional scores" than he would predict. I can into more detail on this when I feel like it.

 

That all kind of assumes you've reached your max potential though, right? I mean certainly somebody who is actively improving and dropping their handicap is ripe to shoot some low net differential rounds.

That's the thing. You would think so, but Knuth himself seems to write articles as if you just go by the chart, pick an arbitrary "long shot number", and then you can identify a sandbagger. I know that I personally put up multiple 300-1 rounds every year. Not if you consider me a 2.9 (the lowest I've been), but certainly if you consider me a 5 (the number I seem to hover around).

 

http://www.popeofslope.com/sandbagging/2010-12-busted.html

 

http://www.popeofslope.com/sandbagging/gates.html

 

So, yes, that's one thing. . .

 

If I go out and put up two -5 differentials (as I've done recently), you can conclude a few things, (that are intertwined, actually). . .

 

1) I'm a sandbagger.

 

2) I'm not really a 6 handicapper, so I'm either getting better, or coming off a hard winter, or something. Or handicaps should be harder to move UP.

 

3) His chart is wrong

 

He seems to think that '1' is by far the most predominant factor of those three. If you have a large number of people coming in with large negative differentials, you can conclude that you're seeing a lot of sandbaggers, OR -- and this is the point a lot of people miss -- you might say that Knuth's chart overestimates the odds of shooting those scores.

 

He doesn't discuss his methodology for those tables. I could make a couple of guesses. I emailed him years ago, and got a not-complete answer, tried to follow up and never heard back from him. As a matter of fact, his answer was kind of dumb and made me wonder if he understood what he was saying statistically. He doesn't have a background in statistics.

[davechen]

I vote that THDC must wear a malliot jaune in all of his future matches, to assert his dominance over the leaderboard.

 

Just what we need, me in a yellow bike shirt, a bright, yellow stuff sausage. A bright, yellow golf shirt, OTOH, I could do.

[GooseHook]

I vote that THDC must wear a malliot jaune in all of his future matches, to assert his dominance over the leaderboard.

 

Just what we need, me in a yellow bike shirt, a bright, yellow stuff sausage. A bright, yellow golf shirt, OTOH, I could do.

 

yellow polo, please. No one wants to see your musette bag lol

[FAbb]

I'd be sort of interested to see how he comes to those probabilities. On the other hand, I don't care. Golfers aren't one size fits all. Some are more steady, and some are streaky.

 

I can see where a guy like city is capable of firing some low net diffs. A big strong point of his game is scoring the ball. He scrambles well, and putts well. Give him a better than average ball striking day, and slightly better than average scoring, and he's gonna hang a low number on you.

 

I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum. My scoring has become easily the weakest part of my game the past 3 years. If I have a better than average ball striking day, it just means more 2-putt pars, and equally sh1tty ability to get the ball down otherwise. My best 2 net differentials (calculated using current index) in my last 20 scores are -2.3 and -2.7. Those are more in line with how often Knuth thinks a round like that should happen for me, especially when you consider I've probably got another 15+ rounds during the time frame those scores cover that aren't posted because they're out of season or were some format that I didn't make a score to post.

[vtnerf]

Anyone outside the Vatican anyone that calls themselves the pope of something typically are trying to cover up for some sort of ineffiecincy. This guy's "gospel" often tweaks me and too many people just fall back on the "well, he said so, so it HAS to be true."

 

You know why he's wrong? He doesn't have a complete data set. How do I know? We are still playing golf and posting scores, thus it is always growing and changing. Pope this.

[vtnerf]

DC, so who is "Google" that's reading this thread?

[TheCityGame]

I'd be sort of interested to see how he comes to those probabilities.

I'll say something simple and something complicated.

 

Simple : you identify a population of golfers you trust to go out and put up scores. Lots of golfers and lots of scores. You see how many times the negative differential exceeded "N" and make that chart you find at his web page. The problem with this is what I was saying and what VTNERF just got at. . .if we see too many "exceptional" scores then they really aren't exceptional any more. You need to update your table and not just assume you got it right. You can't just stop at one point in time, or say you're satisfied with the data, and then use that going forward. There's a chicken and egg thing going on.

 

More complicated (sort of statistical) : You start looking at USGA data. Maybe you do have a trusted population of scores, or maybe not, and you assume these scores fit a standard statistical distribution (e.g. "The Bell Curve", also known as "the normal curve" or the "gaussian distribution"). Then, you can compute a "standard deviation" and a "mean" for several handicap ranges. Then, for a particular round, you calculate what is commonly called a z-score and get a probability associated with that score.

 

Using the complicated method, you can probably keep a consistent distribution no matter how many scores come in, and not really worry about what happens with the exceptional scores. The model is defined by the vast vast majority of scores coming in near the mean. It lets you say "oh, those are exceptional scores" without those scores really changing the model very much.

 

That might be a good way to do it, but I see a lot of things wrong with it and if that's so, I'd really like to see his methods.

 

Anyway, this is what I emailed him about. I asked him if it was all just table-based, or based on distributions, and he said something like, "the latter". When I emailed for clarification, there was no response.

 

I really wish the USGA would release handicap data, at least to an academic community, if not the public.

[jhbangas]

City, those are also probabilities for tournament rounds which would exclude gimmies that I might make 9/10 times but the 10th prevents an exceptional differential. I also know that I'm almost never assess stroke and distance on my weekend rounds. I'm not walking back to the tee.

[vtnerf]

El Pipo says that "Beating your handicap by three strokes or more twice in tournaments – becomes such a rare event that Section 10-3 of the USGA handicap system automatically reduces the player's USGA handicap index. Less than 1 percent of the golfers are reduced under that procedure, so it is an uncommon event, except by the sandbaggers of the links. However, it is true that the size of the handicap index does affect the probability of making a low net score." Since today is the Secitonal qualifying for the US Open, lets apply the 1% theory. There were 9.877 entrants this year. So, by his numbers, 99 of them are sandbaggers and should have their handicap adjusted. Let that sink in with some of the scores posted and knowing what those guys can shoot.

 

Just because he got a perfect 800 on his math SAT's doesn't mean jack to me.

[FAbb]

I guess it's a "best you can do" sort of thing, but some of those assumptions are pretty significant. Do you really have a set of trustworthy data? Don't golfers scores have different standard deviations, even within a handicap range? How do you account for the golfer that's actively improving their game in significant way?

[baddomes]

I would say this. Assuming the same amount of practice and playing time each year, a 34 year old 8-index has a much larger standard deviation of scores than a 60 year old 8-index.

 

edit - That's probably pretty obvious. Fabb just posted that s*** as well.

[TheCityGame]

First rounds are in the books. . .

 

http://www.usopen.com/en_US/news/qualifying/sectional/r_rockville.html

 

McCarthy is still up there. Going to need to leap frog a few people in the afternoon.

[vtnerf]

I would say this. Assuming the same amount of practice and playing time each year, a 34 year old 8-index has a much larger standard deviation of scores than a 60 year old 8-index.

 

edit - That's probably pretty obvious. Fabb just posted that s*** as well.

 

Absolutely 100%. Played OC with Rick a few weeks ago. There is a core group of guys that I've know for decades. We were first in, and when someone asked what "Jim" shot, I said "he's 2 behind us, but it will be a 77." I was right on the nose. 2 guys at the table looked at me funny and asked how I knew that. Well, he plays 4 days a week, and after I saw the course, I knew where he would be good and bad...added it up, and viola. It's a 77. It aint rocket surgery.

 

First rounds are in the books. . .

 

http://www.usopen.co..._rockville.html

 

McCarthy is still up there. Going to need to leap frog a few people in the afternoon.

 

My boy didn't fare so well. Maybe he can go get em in the MD Open.

[baddomes]

there's a guy named JD Domes, so that's cool

 

Just realized it's Dornes. Nevermind.

[2moreTerps]

If the chart is designed to show that people are sandbaggers that’s sort of silly and leads to my baseline opinion on all matters handicap related: Everyone puts too much focus on the handicap number. The handicap is used to make matches close enough to equal. They guy who plays better is going to win.

 

Beyond making matches close enough to equal they’re just an approximation. How about the guy who plays a course all the time that is simply doesn’t match his strengths? He’s going to have a higher handicap. What about the guy who plays the perfect course for him? He’s going to have a lower handicap? What about the guy who plays different courses all over? Higher handicap. What about the guy who he and his friends are slightly lax on the rules? Lower handicap. What about the guy who plays a course whose course rating and slope just don’t seem right? Higher or lower handicap. Etc. etc. etc.

 

Everyone gets too worked up about 4 tenths of a stroke. I know I do.

[Puppetmaster]

Now this is a good beard.