"Net Double Bogey" How stupid is this?

[BlackDiamondPar5]

Exactly!!!

Anyway for the others in this thread defending the change please consider this. ESC was modified in 1993 to what it is today until 1/1/20. Prior to that change in 1993 the allowable score posted was based on par and your handicap. The change back then was driven by the fact that the USGA found that only 25% of golfers used it correctly.

So here we go again, doing what didn't work so well before to appease the RoW.

[duffer987]

While ROW has to add slope to 'appease' North Americans. With universal rules, you don't think there should be a universal way of calculating a handicap index (not saying this is it)?

People who cheat will always cheat, for those who don't, we all now simply pay attention to scoring for handicap purposes the same way, as opposed to a 5 and a 15 doing so differently. Storm in a tea cup.

[BlackDiamondPar5]

No I don't think there was a need for a global handicap. Literarily I did the math and it was around 0.015% of all golfers that felt it was a need.

[LICC]

NDB shouldn't be that hard at all. The biggest issue will be that people aren't aware of the new requirement. If you are at a triple bogey or worse on a hole, just looking at the hole handicap to see if you put the double or triple should be very simple. Requiring hole-by-hole posting would be a mess and I'm glad they decided against that.

[davep043]

@nsxguy says:
"Any stats on usage right now ? What percentage of players post in what way ? I guess I can see {shudder} more & more people using their phones on the course to record their h-b-h scores. Hopefully they'll figure out a way to enter them without holding up play."
Right now, I'd guess that very few rounds are posted hole by hole. In my world, most of the scores are posted on the phone app, and the app does not allow the hole by hole posting option. However, on January 6 the app WILL have that option, and as I've said a few times, I expect it to be the most prominent option. Also as I've said before, I don't expect most people to do this during the round. Most posting will be done as it is now, while sharing a beverage and a story or two in the clubhouse after playing. Or in your case, you'll learn to save the card and use that to enter your scores on the GHIN website. We've had discussions, it will take maybe 20 seconds more to enter 18 single digit numbers, as compared to a single 2 (or maybe 3) digit number.

[LICC]

Do we have to re-hash again how your 20 seconds more estimate is way off from reality? HBH would be a frustrating unnecessary requirement for the majority of golfers.

[BlackDiamondPar5]

I know. I seriously think highly of @davep043 but that time difference is not accurate nor are the additional logistics of having the hole by hole scores for the group and sharing that with the group.

As I said in an earlier post there was a reason ESC was modified in 1993 and it appears we will repeat that issue again.

[LICC]

I think highly of him too and appreciate his respectful responses, but he tends to ignore explanations of views that he disagrees with.

[Colin L]

I was always taught in maths at school that I had to show my working. Would you care to share the workings of this remarkable statistic? To be able to identify a minority group of a worldwide population of golfers to three decimal places is mightily impressive. I'm sure we all deserve to see how you calculated it.

[davep043]

We'll all find out in the new year. I'll let you know my experiences, and you're welcome to provide yours. But I compare this a little bit to dialing a phone number on my phone, while looking at the number written down. Consider a full second for each number, 10 seconds total. Try it for yourself, and see how long it takes. But however you want to do it, you'll be able to navigate away from the hole by hole screen, if you'd rather allocate the handicap strokes and apply net double. That's not all that complicated either, and won't take more than a few seconds. Both methods are acceptable per the Rules, both methods will be accommodated in the new GHIN. I've said it all along, those who care to do it right will figure out how best to do it right, and those who don't care will continue to do it wrong.

 

[bladehunter]

Lol. No. No I don’t. It’s not net at all. Lol ahhhhhhh! Ground hogs day all over again

I haven’t the foggiest idea who gets a shot where. I do know the #1 handicap hole , that’s about it.

[bladehunter]

Right. So why not make a change t hat makes CheAtig harder ? As in “ a little help over here “ says me.

 

I’ve had that conversation with the group and individually. And the nicest response was a laugh. Cuss fights with others , and just plain ignoring me by most.

why Not make it compulsory to turn a score to be posted in to the “ committee “ that governs the handicap club you belong to. And make eligible scores be in actual competition, not everyday friendly games.

afteral. Guys who play together weekly don't need a handicap index to negotiate how many shots bill is giving Sam.

[klebs01]

You are right that the 20 seconds I wrong. It's way too high. 90+% of my scores have been posted hole by hole for the past 4 years when ingot back into golf and around 2000 was hole by hole on the pro shops computer. I feel like I'm beating a dead horse but from experience actually posting hole by hole for years it is absolutely better than total, takes less effort, and is less likely to be fat fingered as there are sums built in so checking is fast. Watching people check their math on paper is way more work and time consuming than putting hbh in the app.

[LICC]

Why take away handicaps from the masses of muni golfers? You may not need them for a regular golf buddy but what about when you are playing with someone you don't know?

[BlackDiamondPar5]

Blade saying that guys that play together weekly don't' need a handicap is pure bunk. Perhaps it's true if they only play with the same four people and they never play elsewhere or with anyone else. But that would keep them from ever participating any kind of tournament, bit it a member guest or whatever, even if it's with 1 of the 4 guys played weekly. I play annually with guys on golf trips I see once per year. I bet that is fairly common for most golfers. Without handicaps that wouldn't be possible. Why restrict people from having a legit handicap? Just because you have issues with the HC doesn't mean that most do. I know you have a horrific issue with the handicap system ---it sounds like you're surrounded by a bunch of morally bankrupt lowlife cheats. If that's the case you have a fairly long list of methods to help fix it.

[dpb5031]

I don't see any difficulty in net dbl. bogey. I'd be willing to bet that I could net down my entire foursome's scores (for posting purposes) in seconds. Agree entering individual hole-by-hole scores would be annoying.

At all the clubs I've belonged/played there's always a four-ball match going on above and beyond whatever the throw-in format is. Point is, most guys know where their strokes fall. They're already familiar with netting down for ESC. Not really any more challenging in my view.

[bladehunter]

That’s just it. I’m not wanting to restrict anyone from having a legit handicap. I’d just like to make everyone have a legit one.

i don’t see the issue in basing handicaps on a “ T score “ type scenario. Then define those scores as including any net or gross event that is officiated by committee. Which could literally be your Saturday dogfight , Wednesday senior day or weekly league play. It will just require volunteers to post the scores. Let’s face it. Finding guys who live to nerd out on numbers doesn’t seem to be hard to do. They always seem to volunteer to make these things run . I’d do it and I hate numbers. Lol. I’d just love to see oversight , and people lose the ability to post at will. I don’t know of any player with a real handicap that never plays anything. 3/4 events a year would suffice.

[davep043]

I'm hopeful that the current set of changes for the WHS will turn out to be a first step, not the end of the road. For those of us in the USGA system, the most logical step to get closer to the rest of the world would be to add pre-registration for handicap posting rounds, and formal attestation. For other parts of the world, perhaps match play and/or fourball scores would become more commonly accepted. I don't know that any of this will happen, but I can hope.

[BlackDiamondPar5]

Sorry I was off... I must have only multiplied by 10 instead of 100 when converting a decimal to %. Anyway it's 0.158%--- so this is why we should show our work ---to get partial credit :)

 

Anyway they received 52,000 survey responses to golfers they surveyed worldwide. So now comes the subjective part and data corrections are welcome. Did they survey only golfers with handicaps? I don't know for sure. There are 60M golfers in the world. Tough to find reliable data, so I cut it down to 25M because a lot of golfers only play once or twice a year (I know very subjective). Of the 52K that responded to the survey, 76% said they were "supportive" to a WHS. So here's the math since you asked :)

(52,000 X 0.76)/25,000,000) X 100 = 0.158%

Even if they only surveyed golfers with handicaps, that is apparently 6M. So if we use those numbers instead it's 0.659% were "supportive" of a WHS.

Then onto the larger issue--- those kinds of surveys are subjective to strong response bias making the data sketchy at best. No one could conclude that the responses were totally random and without potential for bias. I don't know anyone that completed the survey nor did I even see it buried in the 1 email they sent till it was too late. So likely they got a lot of biased responses from those that track this kind of thing carefully... club pros, handicap gurus and handicap committees.

 

Anyway a long winded answer to my statement "No we didn't need a WHS."

[rogolf]

How large does a sample (52,000) need to be to represent the whole to satisfactory error limits? Perhaps 52,000 was sufficient to represent the whole. And I doubt there was any attempts made to distribute the survey to every golfer - that's not how statistical sampling works. Election polls are an example of statistical sampling.

[BlackDiamondPar5]

Don't know but regardless bias will lead to wrong conclusions.

[nsxguy]

See below. Dave is right, as usual. Note he said "20 MORE seconds", not 20 seconds to enter one's score (from beginning to end).

Once one gets to the page, insteads of typing in a gross score and hitting "Enter", one has to, with his scorecard in front of him, type, e.g. 454 345 624 454 432 464 <---- That took me a total of 13 seconds.

Now that IS assuming the cursor "jumps" to the next hole as soon as you type the single digit number. If not, you'd have to hit the "tab" key after each number adding say, 5-7 seconds.

So I'd say 20 seconds is about right. I guess I type a little slower than klebs,,,,,,,,,,,,,

 

[Mudguard]

I don't like the current system of matchplay cards having to be submitted. It's a form of golf where you aren't always trying to play for the best score. IE your opponent may have made par and you have a slick ten footer down the hill for par and a half. If I was playing strokeplay I'd be wary of leaving myself a long return putt, however in matchplay you just give it a good rap down the hill and don't worry if it rolls ten foot by.

Same thing, if you hit it to fifteen feet for birdie and your opponent flubs a couple of chips and concedes the hole, you haven't made a birdie, or a par. Yet you have to post something.

Net Double Bogey doesn't concern me, the majority of our play is stableford (but three in the group will play medal as well) but we have a mix of handicaps sometimes, so if the 12 in our group misses his putt/chip for double on a non stroke hole he may hook the ball up and walk to the next to keep things moving.

But again, we all have our opponent's card in our pocket, with day's pin positions pre-printed and the yardages and stroke holes depending on which tees you've chosen.

Also the entire system here is based on an auto-score system, you mark your score as per normal, but on one side of the card it has room to mark X on your score. This goes in the scanner at the end of the round, each hole is entered automatically, stablefords calculated automatically. The only manual calculation we do is a team best ball match, playing for a beer (low marker goes to zero, everyone else has his handicap taken off theirs).

Everything else is calculated by the system.

[rogolf]

Potentially, depends on the significance of the bias. (yours is showing btw) :-)

[SNIPERBBB]

Unless you're playing in a league, why would you care about some stranger's handicap? Shouldnt really matter to you as playing for money against strangers is a good way to get taken, playing off handicaps is even worse...

[Mudguard]

Because occasionally a green fee/new member might fill a spot in a fourball? Do you exclude them from some kind of match because you don't know them? That's what a handicap is for. And if the handicapping system is robust then it shouldn't matter. You think I want to play someone off a plus handicap to my six off the stick?

[SNIPERBBB]

Negotiate the strokes.

[BlackDiamondPar5]

Agreed Dave. I won't be posting for another 4 or 5 months so it won't be till later next year before I can say my concerns were founded or not. But I'm sure we will be chatting in later 2020.

At any rate, as I said before, and this is important--- The USGA abandoned a par and HC strokes in 1993 because 75% of the golfers didn't understand or use it properly. That gave way to the ESC we know till 2020. We shall see if it causes issues again.

[rogolf]

I'm sure there were compromises by all of the world's handicapping authorities (six?) in order to reach desired outcome.

[BlackDiamondPar5]

100% agree. But as I said earlier today, we had to compromise to get a system few really wanted or needed.

 

I still have yet to hear from anyone that took the survey or participated in any of these focus groups as to what really went on to drive this alleged need for the whs. As it was when they surveyed golfers it was already positioned as this is what we're doing what do you think? It was never a choice nor to address a need.