Cage Match to the DEATH: LPGA Tour vs. Middle-aged Scratch and Below

[DavePelz4]

So far, there have been approximately 45 rounds so far of 77 or higher on the track. We need to keep some things in perspective here. OB is a traveling plus handicap who has tournament experience in which he's won as well as having played in money matches with Top 25 PGA Tour players and performed admirably. He's always been gracious and shared his great rounds and struggles as well He's also played Wilshire before. If there was a challenge right now, he's not playing as much as he was and that could be a differential. This isn't like he's some random guy who plays a 9 hole course over and over again with a 35 rating and purports how difficult the course is.

[tiderider]

well, this is man vs woman, and he better get his arse out there on the range and make sure everything's clicking ...

 

 

[DavePelz4]

well, this is man vs woman, and he better get his arse out there on the range and make sure everything's clicking ...

 

 

 

Can't speak to him having money but I know he has a certain set of skills...

[MtlJeff]

One thing this forum is famous for....hypothetical scenarios where a man can beat a LPGA player. I guess I don't see the infatuation.

 

^^^THIS^^^ I don't get it either...

 

Male chauvinism is strong here. I doubt the LPGA players at their tournament dinners are sitting around discussing how they would love to compete against scratch or 4-handicap amateur men. This is a fictitious match dreamt up by egotistical guys who want to brag. So what's the next step? Petition the LPGA to have guys enter tournaments? Just leave the women alone. 99% of them are doing fine competing against each other and not comparing themselves to men. Annika, Wie, and Lexi wanted to see what would happen. After that, they went back to their own Tour.

 

Why is it chauvenism? You even point out that some LPGA players in the past have wanted to test themselves against male pros. That is perfectly fine in your eyes, but a scratch male wondering how he'd stack up against an LPGA player must be a chauvenist?

 

Are we not allowed to have athletic curiosities, topics of discussion etc....on this after all being a forum and everything

 

The famous US women's soccer team in the 1990's featuring Mia Hamm used to play against the 16yr old boys national team to practice. ...Serena and Venus Williams have played tennis against lower ranked male pros to see how they'd do....

 

Sometimes people are just curious to see

[dhc1]

I don't get these threads. Since it seems to me it comes down to a perception of how distance affects score, I looked at numbers.

 

This year, the LPGA top average distance is 283. The median LPGA Pro average distance is 256. The first time the top average driving distance crested 280 on the PGA Tour was 1986, with Davis Love III at 285. Larry Nelson represented the median average at 261.

 

If distance is the central issue to these arguments, the opposite argument can be made by saying, "Do you think a scratch male golfer can beat a male PGA Pro from 1986?" I think most of us would call BS on that, so why do we still entertain the notion that a scratch male could beat an LPGA Tour pro?

 

FFS - if you take the slope/rating of the cut-line at an LPGA tournament (which is usually the member's tees), you get a men's USGA index of somewhere between +2 to 1 over. This is well below the silly 4 handicap thread but nowhere near BS to say that a scratch male could never earn an LPGA tour card (top 150 or so?). It's right around the mix although I'd guess they'd just miss. Would they win an LPGA tournament? NFW as the top girls are much much better than the average LPGA players as they don't have the depth that the men's game has.

 

For example, the cut line for this week's tournament was +5 over two days. Given that the course rating is 71.8 vs a par of 71, that's roughly 1.5 strokes over the rating each day. Using a 132 slope, it's about 1.0 index for two rounds played. This corroborates to the back half of the ladies in an LPGA tournament being around a +2 to a 1 over as a men's index.

 

For a guy who says "I looked at numbers", It's just math.

 

Looking forward to seeing how the other side of this debate plays so that the scores are in!

[deadsolid...shank]

One thing this forum is famous for....hypothetical scenarios where a man can beat a LPGA player. I guess I don't see the infatuation.

 

^^^THIS^^^ I don't get it either...

 

Male chauvinism is strong here. I doubt the LPGA players at their tournament dinners are sitting around discussing how they would love to compete against scratch or 4-handicap amateur men. This is a fictitious match dreamt up by egotistical guys who want to brag. So what's the next step? Petition the LPGA to have guys enter tournaments? Just leave the women alone. 99% of them are doing fine competing against each other and not comparing themselves to men. Annika, Wie, and Lexi wanted to see what would happen. After that, they went back to their own Tour.

 

Why is it chauvenism? You even point out that some LPGA players in the past have wanted to test themselves against male pros. That is perfectly fine in your eyes, but a scratch male wondering how he'd stack up against an LPGA player must be a chauvenist?

 

Are we not allowed to have athletic curiosities, topics of discussion etc....on this after all being a forum and everything

 

The famous US women's soccer team in the 1990's featuring Mia Hamm used to play against the 16yr old boys national team to practice. ...Serena and Venus Williams have played tennis against lower ranked male pros to see how they'd do....

 

Sometimes people are just curious to see

 

I think part of it is the women's performances, stats, times, scores, etc are more in line with what most of us average male athletes can relate to, so we like to compare.

 

We know we can't do the same things the male professionals can, so why compare to them.

[Obee]

So a few things from this weekend. I watched the recorded final round last night. Was so cool to see the course on television! They even mentioned the Macbeth Invitational in the telecast.

1. The course looked great!
   
2. Attendance at the event seemed to be quite nice for the weekend, but not sure how it compares to any other LPGA final round.
   
3. On Sunday, they played at least two tees well up from where we will play in May
   

• #13, they played at 482. We will play at 513
  
• #15, they played at 452. We will play between 540 and 555. On that hole, in particular, that's a huge difference because there is a wide cross-hazard short of the green. From 550, very of the male scratch/below players "go for it" in two. From 452, it's just a reasonably difficult par 4.
  

As for anyone thinking this is a chauvinistic thread: I'm truly sorry you feel that way. This is a fun way to add some real data to one of the two big questions that come up on a regular basis from golfers all over the world in locker rooms, at the nineteenth hole, and on golf message boards like this: "How do scratch players compare to Male PGA Tour Pros, Mini-Tour Pros and to LPGA Tour pros."

 

I didn't invent the questions. People have been asking them forever and they will continue to ask them. Some who ask the LPGA question may, indeed, have chauvinistic motives, but I think they are in the minority. I do have a very firm answer, and I believe that this exercise will confirm what I already believe to be true, but that doesn't really matter. My main hope is that this little dalliance adds a bit to everyone's knowledge on the subject and gives us something fun to discuss and kick around. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

We should get some interesting data out of this....

[jt2gt]

Yes, data should be interesting especially if you consider the premise of the original "4 HC vs LPGA pro" thread which stated that -- "a 4-handicapper, [would] get so badly beaten by any of the LPGA's 152 players (even those with nonexempt status) that he'd have a tough time getting back up." (bold emphasis added)

 

This I am still not so sure about and with a lot of folks talking about going to mixed field sporting events and not having a women specific field/rules, I think its a good thing to talk about.

[Awsi Dooger]

Back to this again. Everybody wants to be a Happy Adjuster. That's the trend on all sports sites. Make reality anything you want it to be. That's where you get threads like the ones here desperately Adjusting today's level of competition miles above anything Jack or Arnie faced, and hence 14 majors now is the equivalent of 26 then. Brainstorming stuff like that. It's one of the reasons I tired of this forum. Likewise a Dolphins site where it was proclaimed that Dan Marino would throw for 7000 yards in today's NFL.

 

Meanwhile, to let in on a little secret, during the 25 years I lived in Las Vegas and bet on sports, one of the great strategies was merely to rely on normalcy. That's it. You didn't need to know much of anything, other than to deflect the adjustments. For example, when I arrived in Las Vegas the NBA scores were very high, in the 219 range for average points per game. One high rolling sportsbook used to put up the so-called Grand Salami every day, which was the total points scored in all games that day. So it might be 1520 1/2, or something like that.Very quickly a handful of friends and I figured out that all we needed to do was ignore the specifics of that day. Forget about which teams were playing. Ignore injuries. Ignore travel. Just look at what it averaged out to per game. If it was notably higher than 219, we'd take the under. If it was markedly lower than 219, we'd take the over.

 

It was incredible how dependable and profitable that was. It felt like stealing. We were winning 70+% via that method alone.

 

And it was an amazing early lesson: One -- or a few -- major foundational variables is worth exponentially more than all of the wobbly subjective gunk, the type of thinking that gets everyone into trouble. The best way to become an accurate forecaster is to ignore today. In the big picture, today probably doesn't mean anything. In Nate Silver terminology, it is the noise and not the signal. Let all the sloppy types devour this new detail and that new detail, forcing themselves to make one fresh decision after another...like the OP. In fact, the OP is a grand example of what I'm referring to, the type of thinking that is destined to fail whenever variables and outcomes are put to a test.

 

You are simply assigning too much burden on accurately weighing this and that. It can be done. But the people who can do it are so rare I don't know why anyone attempts it. And the people who can do it generally lose the touch before long.

 

That's a roundabout method to announcing the simple perspective: The pro will be superior at 20 yards. The pro will be superior at 40 yards. The pro will be superior at 200 yards. The pro will be superior at 550 yards.

 

I'll take that knowledge and allow it to be applied to a sufficient sample size, and take my chances. You guys can amend all the ifs and buts regarding club selection and driving distance and wedge dispersion, etc.

 

Lotsa luck

[KBong]

Obee

On Sunday...the commentators on the LPGA Hugel event mentioned the MacBeth Cup....they said it was a pretty difficult event to qualify for.

[tiderider]

Back to this again. Everybody wants to be a Happy Adjuster. That's the trend on all sports sites. Make reality anything you want it to be. That's where you get threads like the ones here desperately Adjusting today's level of competition miles above anything Jack or Arnie faced, and hence 14 majors now is the equivalent of 26 then. Brainstorming stuff like that. It's one of the reasons I tired of this forum. Likewise a Dolphins site where it was proclaimed that Dan Marino would throw for 7000 yards in today's NFL.

 

Meanwhile, to let in on a little secret, during the 25 years I lived in Las Vegas and bet on sports, one of the great strategies was merely to rely on normalcy. That's it. You didn't need to know much of anything, other than to deflect the adjustments. For example, when I arrived in Las Vegas the NBA scores were very high, in the 219 range for average points per game. One high rolling sportsbook used to put up the so-called Grand Salami every day, which was the total points scored in all games that day. So it might be 1520 1/2, or something like that.Very quickly a handful of friends and I figured out that all we needed to do was ignore the specifics of that day. Forget about which teams were playing. Ignore injuries. Ignore travel. Just look at what it averaged out to per game. If it was notably higher than 219, we'd take the under. If it was markedly lower than 219, we'd take the over.

 

It was incredible how dependable and profitable that was. It felt like stealing. We were winning 70+% via that method alone.

 

And it was an amazing early lesson: One -- or a few -- major foundational variables is worth exponentially more than all of the wobbly subjective gunk, the type of thinking that gets everyone into trouble. The best way to become an accurate forecaster is to ignore today. In the big picture, today probably doesn't mean anything. In Nate Silver terminology, it is the noise and not the signal. Let all the sloppy types devour this new detail and that new detail, forcing themselves to make one fresh decision after another...like the OP. In fact, the OP is a grand example of what I'm referring to, the type of thinking that is destined to fail whenever variables and outcomes are put to a test.

 

You are simply assigning too much burden on accurately weighing this and that. It can be done. But the people who can do it are so rare I don't know why anyone attempts it. And the people who can do it generally lose the touch before long.

 

That's a roundabout method to announcing the simple perspective: The pro will be superior at 20 yards. The pro will be superior at 40 yards. The pro will be superior at 200 yards. The pro will be superior at 550 yards.

 

I'll take that knowledge and allow it to be applied to a sufficient sample size, and take my chances. You guys can amend all the ifs and buts regarding club selection and driving distance and wedge dispersion, etc.

 

Lotsa luck

 

what claim has the op made other than it will be a fun/interesting to see/compare the scores? ... he's stated in one post his avg score thus far in this tournament is 74 ...

 

why is everyone getting defensive or taking a "you'll be wrong - i guarantee it" tone? ... other than they're insecure and need to prove it later on? ...

 

he's playing a course that is relatively the same the lpga players are playing and wondering how he'll stack up ... that's why we live in AMERICA ...

[Bingo1976]

Yes, data should be interesting especially if you consider the premise of the original "4 HC vs LPGA pro" thread which stated that -- "a 4-handicapper, [would] get so badly beaten by any of the LPGA's 152 players (even those with nonexempt status) that he'd have a tough time getting back up." (bold emphasis added)

 

This I am still not so sure about and with a lot of folks talking about going to mixed field sporting events and not having a women specific field/rules, I think its a good thing to talk about.

 

I was a 5 at one point. I've seen the women at the HSBC and had a friend who plays on the small European ladies circuits. I was never within one shot of any of them ever. A 4 handicap is like comparing a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to a black belt - and it's 'not even close' to coin an overused phrase

 

 

he's playing a course that is relatively the same the lpga players are playing and wondering how he'll stack up ... that's why we live in AMERICA ...

 

I'm pretty sure you live in America because you were either born there or migrated there.

 

I don't think this discussion is entirely American - the ladies do play the same courses in Britain that are used for the Open and other top level male and female amateur events. Nor am I aware of any reason why I (as a Brit living in Hong Kong) can't opine on the matter.

 

I didn't invent the questions. People have been asking them forever and they will continue to ask them. Some who ask the LPGA question may, indeed, have chauvinistic motives, but I think they are in the minority. I do have a very firm answer, and I believe that this exercise will confirm what I already believe to be true, but that doesn't really matter. My main hope is that this little dalliance adds a bit to everyone's knowledge on the subject and gives us something fun to discuss and kick around. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

We should get some interesting data out of this....

 

Obee, you are one of the stand-up guys on this forum - it was very clear why you started the thread, and anyone with an iota of intelligence would see it for the fun 'whataboutism' discussion that it was meant to inspire. Sadly, society as a whole has become so polarised that you can't start such debates without the rabid loons descending in short order and trying to hijack it for their own agenda's.

 

Nothing much more to add other than - thanks for being one of the forum good guys, and play well in the comp - I'll be rooting from you from half a world away!

[80sFredriksson]

It is a fun discussion, just like when Annika played at colonial was fun, she beat a bunch of pga tour pros as far as I can remember. I am sure a scratch can beat an average LPGA tour pro for a round or a tourney.

[mikedejong]

I used to work at a course here in Edmonton that hosted the LPGA Canadian Open about 10 years ago. I was really curious to see how they would do on our course. I have played it literally 1,000 times and my best score was even par from the back tee. My handicap ranges between 1 and 4, so I am nowhere near as good a player as that being discussed here. The ladies played it from essentially the blue tees (one tee up from the back, about 6,500 yards as opposed to 6,800 yards or so), with some up and some back. Lorena Ochoa won at 16 under par, and I think the cut was around even. I was really shocked at how low they went for 4 days. This has nothing to do with the discussion here I guess, but I came to realize that the LPGA players are really good. Better than I thought they were, having watched them play a course I know really well like it was nothing.

[DavePelz4]

I used to work at a course here in Edmonton that hosted the LPGA Canadian Open about 10 years ago. I was really curious to see how they would do on our course. I have played it literally 1,000 times and my best score was even par from the back tee. My handicap ranges between 1 and 4, so I am nowhere near as good a player as that being discussed here. The ladies played it from essentially the blue tees (one tee up from the back, about 6,500 yards as opposed to 6,800 yards or so), with some up and some back. Lorena Ochoa won at 16 under par, and I think the cut was around even. I was really shocked at how low they went for 4 days. This has nothing to do with the discussion here I guess, but I came to realize that the LPGA players are really good. Better than I thought they were, having watched them play a course I know really well like it was nothing.

 

This is an interesting post as related to the cut line. Keep in mind that this isn't about OB shooting 16 under par over 4 rounds and "winning" an LPGA event. In the tournament referenced, there were probably 30-40 players who shot well over par including some of the top players.

 

Just look at last week and the players who didn't make the cut. There were 10 LPGA major champions who missed the cut. Nordqvist, Lewis, Stanford, Henderson, etc. There were players who posted 2 rounds in the 80's.

[jmck]

Easy one. Take the pro. Yes the scratch or below can hang on any given round, but would likely get smoked over time due to consistency issues most pros don't have.

 

I agree with this. It's really that simple.

[nicodywill]

Easy one. Take the pro. Yes the scratch or below can hang on any given round, but would likely get smoked over time due to consistency issues most pros don't have.

 

I agree with this. It's really that simple.

I'd tend to agree as long as the course length isn't wildly longer than what the LPGA player is used to, introducing that into the equation changes things for me.

[jmck]

I don't get these threads. Since it seems to me it comes down to a perception of how distance affects score, I looked at numbers.

 

This year, the LPGA top average distance is 283. The median LPGA Pro average distance is 256. The first time the top average driving distance crested 280 on the PGA Tour was 1986, with Davis Love III at 285. Larry Nelson represented the median average at 261.

 

If distance is the central issue to these arguments, the opposite argument can be made by saying, "Do you think a scratch male golfer can beat a male PGA Pro from 1986?" I think most of us would call BS on that, so why do we still entertain the notion that a scratch male could beat an LPGA Tour pro?

 

FFS - if you take the slope/rating of the cut-line at an LPGA tournament (which is usually the member's tees), you get a men's USGA index of somewhere between +2 to 1 over. This is well below the silly 4 handicap thread but nowhere near BS to say that a scratch male could never earn an LPGA tour card (top 150 or so?). It's right around the mix although I'd guess they'd just miss. Would they win an LPGA tournament? NFW as the top girls are much much better than the average LPGA players as they don't have the depth that the men's game has.

 

For example, the cut line for this week's tournament was +5 over two days. Given that the course rating is 71.8 vs a par of 71, that's roughly 1.5 strokes over the rating each day. Using a 132 slope, it's about 1.0 index for two rounds played. This corroborates to the back half of the ladies in an LPGA tournament being around a +2 to a 1 over as a men's index.

 

For a guy who says "I looked at numbers", It's just math.

 

Looking forward to seeing how the other side of this debate plays so that the scores are in!

 

That's a total softball, because that's not how handicap indexes work. If you take the cut line and start your math from there you're averaging the entire field (or picking the median score of the full field or whatever you want to call it depending on the week). To actually figure the handicap index of an LPGA field you'd throw out everyone below the cut line or median score and instead figure out the average/median of only the ladies who made the cut. Just like us ams get to throw out the 10 worst of our last 20.

 

That's oversimplified and not exactly perfect due to field sizes pre- and post- cut, ties, WDs, some weeks the cut score is going to be closer to an average, some week closer to a median, etc. But anyway, that method is way closer to an actual full field handicap. If you want to figure it out exactly, you'd have to look up everyone in the field, figure out what their last 20 scores were, and then see which of their rounds get thrown out that week.

 

It's exactly like Frostfield says above. Pros have consistency over time that ams don't have. The guy in Obee's field having the best day might be able to hang with the best of the LPGA on that given day, but zero chance Obee's whole group of 40 hangs with the LPGA field, even on one day, let alone three days in a row. Nothing against them, it just ain't happening.

[Argonne69]

The median scoring average on the LPGA is currently 72.5. The 59th player averages 72.0. As a general rule handicaps track three strokes below the average scores.

 

The 79th ranked player (by scoring average), Morgan Pressel, has 21 rounds this season. The high round was an 80. Her low was a 68. Her best 10 were 68, 69, 69, 69, 70, 71, 71, 71, 72, 72.

[dhc1]

I don't get these threads. Since it seems to me it comes down to a perception of how distance affects score, I looked at numbers.

 

This year, the LPGA top average distance is 283. The median LPGA Pro average distance is 256. The first time the top average driving distance crested 280 on the PGA Tour was 1986, with Davis Love III at 285. Larry Nelson represented the median average at 261.

 

If distance is the central issue to these arguments, the opposite argument can be made by saying, "Do you think a scratch male golfer can beat a male PGA Pro from 1986?" I think most of us would call BS on that, so why do we still entertain the notion that a scratch male could beat an LPGA Tour pro?

 

FFS - if you take the slope/rating of the cut-line at an LPGA tournament (which is usually the member's tees), you get a men's USGA index of somewhere between +2 to 1 over. This is well below the silly 4 handicap thread but nowhere near BS to say that a scratch male could never earn an LPGA tour card (top 150 or so?). It's right around the mix although I'd guess they'd just miss. Would they win an LPGA tournament? NFW as the top girls are much much better than the average LPGA players as they don't have the depth that the men's game has.

 

For example, the cut line for this week's tournament was +5 over two days. Given that the course rating is 71.8 vs a par of 71, that's roughly 1.5 strokes over the rating each day. Using a 132 slope, it's about 1.0 index for two rounds played. This corroborates to the back half of the ladies in an LPGA tournament being around a +2 to a 1 over as a men's index.

 

For a guy who says "I looked at numbers", It's just math.

 

Looking forward to seeing how the other side of this debate plays so that the scores are in!

 

That's a total softball, because that's not how handicap indexes work. If you take the cut line and start your math from there you're averaging the entire field (or picking the median score of the full field or whatever you want to call it depending on the week). To actually figure the handicap index of an LPGA field you'd throw out everyone below the cut line or median score and instead figure out the average/median of only the ladies who made the cut. Just like us ams get to throw out the 10 worst of our last 20.

 

That's oversimplified and not exactly perfect due to field sizes pre- and post- cut, ties, WDs, some weeks the cut score is going to be closer to an average, some week closer to a median, etc. But anyway, that method is way closer to an actual full field handicap. If you want to figure it out exactly, you'd have to look up everyone in the field, figure out what their last 20 scores were, and then see which of their rounds get thrown out that week.

 

It's exactly like Frostfield says above. Pros have consistency over time that ams don't have. The guy in Obee's field having the best day might be able to hang with the best of the LPGA on that given day, but zero chance Obee's whole group of 40 hangs with the LPGA field, even on one day, let alone three days in a row. Nothing against them, it just ain't happening.

 

Thanks for the overview on the handicap system.....

 

Not sure what you said negates my point that a scratch men’s player could be in the mix for earning an LPGA card which is about 150 ladies. No one is talking about beating the best of the lpga as I directly stated....

[dan360]

I've never subscribed to the belief it matters one way or the other. As a guy, it's a lose lose situation.

 

Lose -- haha you got beat by a girl!

 

Win -- Um. Wow. Cool story bro. You beat a girl.

 

 

I'd rather just rate their sandwich making skills and grade their flexibility.

 

 

Joking. Joking. Joking. The LPGA players are very good. So are some dad bod wielding low hdcp dudes. Let it be.

[jmck]

Thanks for the overview on the handicap system.....

 

Not sure what you said negates my point that a scratch men's player could be in the mix for earning an LPGA card which is about 150 ladies. No one is talking about beating the best of the lpga as I directly stated....

 

You're very welcome. The point is that you miscalculated the handicap of a full field LPGA event by doing the math entirely wrong. The full field handicap of an LPGA event isn't +2 to 1 as you stated, again, because you did the math entirely wrong.

[dhc1]

Thanks for the overview on the handicap system.....

 

Not sure what you said negates my point that a scratch men's player could be in the mix for earning an LPGA card which is about 150 ladies. No one is talking about beating the best of the lpga as I directly stated....

 

You're very welcome. The point is that you miscalculated the handicap of a full field LPGA event by doing the math entirely wrong. The full field handicap of an LPGA event isn't +2 to 1 as you stated, again, because you did the math entirely wrong.

 

What do you think the equivalent handicap is for the 150th ranked LPGA player? The median player = 75th?

 

To give you a hint, the average cut-line score is about 2 strokes over the course rating as we’ve looked at this over the course of a season on courses that are usually a bit shorter than members tees as obee stated. Argonne69 gave you another data point as well

[Barfolomew]

Obee....whats the deal with "middle aged scratch" hahaha! A scratch is a scratch even if hes 22 or 42 they shoot same scores lol!

 

Im middle aged and play par golf and would take on a young scratch punk any day of the week, gosh I sound a little butt hurt haha!!

[Argonne69]

Thanks for the overview on the handicap system.....

 

Not sure what you said negates my point that a scratch men's player could be in the mix for earning an LPGA card which is about 150 ladies. No one is talking about beating the best of the lpga as I directly stated....

 

You're very welcome. The point is that you miscalculated the handicap of a full field LPGA event by doing the math entirely wrong. The full field handicap of an LPGA event isn't +2 to 1 as you stated, again, because you did the math entirely wrong.

 

What do you think the equivalent handicap is for the 150th ranked LPGA player? The median player = 75th?

 

To give you a hint, the average cut-line score is about 2 strokes over the course rating as we've looked at this over the course of a season on courses that are usually a bit shorter than members tees as obee stated. Argonne69 gave you another data point as well

 

Using the men's rating, or the woman's rating? The last time I looked they are women, and their rating from the blue tees (6265 yards) is 77.1. They played from 6450 yards, or a combo of Macbeth/Green. The rating is ~78.2.

 

The scoring average for the 150th ranked LPGA player is 75.67. She's approximately a +5. The median player is ~+8.

 

'Not sure why folks insist on calculating women's indexes using the men's ratings.

[jmck]

Thanks for the overview on the handicap system.....

 

Not sure what you said negates my point that a scratch men's player could be in the mix for earning an LPGA card which is about 150 ladies. No one is talking about beating the best of the lpga as I directly stated....

 

You're very welcome. The point is that you miscalculated the handicap of a full field LPGA event by doing the math entirely wrong. The full field handicap of an LPGA event isn't +2 to 1 as you stated, again, because you did the math entirely wrong.

 

What do you think the equivalent handicap is for the 150th ranked LPGA player? The median player = 75th?

 

To give you a hint, the average cut-line score is about 2 strokes over the course rating as we've looked at this over the course of a season on courses that are usually a bit shorter than members tees as obee stated. Argonne69 gave you another data point as well

 

Here's my data point. I'm currently a scratch and have been as good as a +2.9. I was never once delusional enough to think I was good enough to play on the LPGA tour.

[jmck]

Using the men's rating, or the woman's rating? The last time I looked they are women, and their rating from the blue tees (6265 yards) is 77.1. They played from 6450 yards, or a combo of Macbeth/Green. The rating is ~78.2.

 

The scoring average for the 150th ranked LPGA player is 75.67. She's approximately a +5. The median player is ~+8.

 

'Not sure why folks insist on calculating women's indexes using the men's ratings.

 

'Tis a mystery.

 

I've yet to meet an actual honest, traveling scratch who thinks they're as good as an LPGA tour player. It's always the vanity caps, or the 5s or 8s who think they're only a few missed putts away from being a scratch, ergo they're only a few missed putts away from beating an LPGA tour player. To a true scratch golfer who plays competitively and has seen even one LPGA tour event in person.....well let's just say it's just incredibly obvious to him that there's a massive gulf between what he can do on the course and what an LPGA tour player can do on the course.

[dhc1]

Thanks for the overview on the handicap system.....

 

Not sure what you said negates my point that a scratch men's player could be in the mix for earning an LPGA card which is about 150 ladies. No one is talking about beating the best of the lpga as I directly stated....

 

You're very welcome. The point is that you miscalculated the handicap of a full field LPGA event by doing the math entirely wrong. The full field handicap of an LPGA event isn't +2 to 1 as you stated, again, because you did the math entirely wrong.

 

What do you think the equivalent handicap is for the 150th ranked LPGA player? The median player = 75th?

 

To give you a hint, the average cut-line score is about 2 strokes over the course rating as we've looked at this over the course of a season on courses that are usually a bit shorter than members tees as obee stated. Argonne69 gave you another data point as well

 

Using the men's rating, or the woman's rating? The last time I looked they are women, and their rating from the blue tees (6265 yards) is 77.1. They played from 6450 yards, or a combo of Macbeth/Green. The rating is ~78.2.

 

The scoring average for the 150th ranked LPGA player is 75.67. She's approximately a +5. The median player is ~+8.

 

'Not sure why folks insist on calculating women's indexes using the men's ratings.

 

The ratings for men and women from the exact same set of tees is about 6.0 on almost all courses. That’s makes the 150th ranked player somewhere around a men’s scratch and the median around a +2, assuming your numbers.

 

The reason reasonable people try to convert women’s ratings to men’s is to see how they compare to men. There is a men’s equivalent level (that isn’t a 4) which matches the bottom end of the LPGA. I’m not sure why some people get so focused on defending them except against the true trolls who think that they women aren’t exceptional golfers.

[dhc1]

Using the men's rating, or the woman's rating? The last time I looked they are women, and their rating from the blue tees (6265 yards) is 77.1. They played from 6450 yards, or a combo of Macbeth/Green. The rating is ~78.2.

 

The scoring average for the 150th ranked LPGA player is 75.67. She's approximately a +5. The median player is ~+8.

 

'Not sure why folks insist on calculating women's indexes using the men's ratings.

 

'Tis a mystery.

 

I've yet to meet an actual honest, traveling scratch who thinks they're as good as an LPGA tour player. It's always the vanity caps, or the 5s or 8s who think they're only a few missed putts away from being a scratch, ergo they're only a few missed putts away from beating an LPGA tour player. To a true scratch golfer who plays competitively and has seen even one LPGA tour event in person.....well let's just say it's just incredibly obvious to him that there's a massive gulf between what he can do on the course and what an LPGA tour player can do on the course.

 

I see you’ve moved away from any math. Good call despite all your unprecedented knowledge about how handicaps are calculated.

 

Let’s see how obee’s tourney goes and we can debate what the rating differential is due to the shorter par 5....

[jmck]

Using the men's rating, or the woman's rating? The last time I looked they are women, and their rating from the blue tees (6265 yards) is 77.1. They played from 6450 yards, or a combo of Macbeth/Green. The rating is ~78.2.

 

The scoring average for the 150th ranked LPGA player is 75.67. She's approximately a +5. The median player is ~+8.

 

'Not sure why folks insist on calculating women's indexes using the men's ratings.

 

'Tis a mystery.

 

I've yet to meet an actual honest, traveling scratch who thinks they're as good as an LPGA tour player. It's always the vanity caps, or the 5s or 8s who think they're only a few missed putts away from being a scratch, ergo they're only a few missed putts away from beating an LPGA tour player. To a true scratch golfer who plays competitively and has seen even one LPGA tour event in person.....well let's just say it's just incredibly obvious to him that there's a massive gulf between what he can do on the course and what an LPGA tour player can do on the course.

 

I see you've moved away from any math. Good call despite all your unprecedented knowledge about how handicaps are calculated.

 

Let's see how obee's tourney goes and we can debate what the rating differential is due to the shorter par 5....

 

Whatever man. You're the one who keeps getting the math wrong and misunderstanding how handicaps work, so I don't know what to tell you there.

 

A woman who can play to a +5 or better wipes the floor with a man who's a 0 all day everyday and twice on Sundays. I've seen it, and it isn't close. At all.