Is the handicap PCC working?

[VinnyG41]

So just posted two rounds this last weekend in 20-25mph winds, gusting 40mph+. No PCC on either of those days. I have a theory as to why this is but can't support this at all...

 

As people mentioned in this thread, there has to be at least a certain number of scores posted for a course before a PCC calculation can even take place. I think the general sentiment from people playing in wind like that is "I'm not posting this score" since (this might be different for others) most people I know use their handicap as more of a gauge of how good of a golfer they are rather than a competition aid. Or there just aren't enough players, with or without a handicap, posting scores on a particular day.

 

Also, the only place I really ever see PCC occur is in competitive rounds where we have a field of 100+ players and our local golf association posts the round for you, so there's guaranteed to be at least that many scores posted for that course on that day. 

 

All that's to say, I don't think PCC is working since there just aren't enough people posting scores and that is the basis for PCC to work. 

[davep043]

1 hour ago, VinnyG41 said:

All that's to say, I don't think PCC is working since there just aren't enough people posting scores and that is the basis for PCC to work. 

I don't doubt that your comments are accurate, players aren't posting scores properly.   This isn't a problem with the PCC working or not, its a problem with the players not posting scores.  No system can work properly if the people using the system refuse to comply with the rules of the system.   

[jvincent]

I wonder if the "post by midnight" is part of the problem? I know that there are quite a few tardy posters out there and if they miss the midnight cut-off that might be a factor.

 

On a sort of related note, our club now automatically sends out reminder emails if you were on the tee sheet and didn't post a score as part of our peer review process. I just got one because we had a 6-6-6 tournament (not eligible for handicap purposes) and it came out two days after the round so had it been a postable round it would have come to late for the PCC cutoff.

[Mr. Bean]

I cannot help wondering why people get so upset over a thing that has a negligible effect to a handicap.

 

And to answer the question in the title of this thread: No, it is not working. At all. But as it has a negligible effect I wouldn't bother writing so many posts about it.

 

 

Edited May 31, 2022 by Mr. Bean

[davep043]

27 minutes ago, Mr. Bean said:

No, it is not working. At all.

Interestingly, I recently had a couple of +3 PCC adjustments.  I don't know whether its working at all, or working as intended, I can really only see its effect on my handicap, and for rounds at my home club.  I do wonder if the calculation method will get revised a bit over time, and the  WHS participants get enough data to evaluate the effectiveness.

[VinnyG41]

41 minutes ago, Mr. Bean said:

I cannot help wondering why people get so upset over a thing that has a negligible effect to a handicap.

 

And to answer the question in the title of this thread: No, it is not working. At all. But as it has a negligible effect I wouldn't bother writing so many posts about it.

 

 

I'd say if anything it's just validation from the system that I played a course in harder conditions than usual. Is that vain? Sure, I'm fine admitting it. And I think that answers your question as to why people care about whether PCC is fair or not. But to your point, yeah, there are much more drastic ways to affect handicap whether you want to drop it or raise it, like being better or purposefully sucking. 

[Mr. Bean]

16 minutes ago, davep043 said:

Interestingly, I recently had a couple of +3 PCC adjustments.  I don't know whether its working at all, or working as intended, I can really only see its effect on my handicap, and for rounds at my home club.  I do wonder if the calculation method will get revised a bit over time, and the  WHS participants get enough data to evaluate the effectiveness.

 

Ok, let us broaden this a bit.

 

My view is that as PCC has a negligible effect on the handicaps over an extended period it is not working (as intended) and is a completely futile parameter in WHS. Prevailing conditions have and always have had an effect on the overall scores of that single day / competition but that effect will even out later on. Thus it is my firm opinion that any attempt to correct the deviations in the scores by introducing a rigid parameter is completely unnecessary especially in the current WHS with 8/20 scores to count.

 

Ugh, I have spoken!

 

Edited May 31, 2022 by Mr. Bean
Typo

[VinnyG41]

3 hours ago, davep043 said:

I don't doubt that your comments are accurate, players aren't posting scores properly.   This isn't a problem with the PCC working or not, its a problem with the players not posting scores.  No system can work properly if the people using the system refuse to comply with the rules of the system.   

I agree with you but at some point, if enough people don't follow the rules, they probably shouldn't be rules and the governing body should change the rule so it can be followed or admit it was a stupid rule and get rid of it. But like Mr. Bean said, this is essentially noise in how a handicap is calculated. Might not be worth it and having it is just giving people something to complain about that really doesn't matter at all. I'm happy to complain about it though 🙂

[DLiver]

I'm not sure PCC is calculated on as few as eight posted rounds at a given course on a given day (I know that's what the WHS says, but...). I had the experience of playing with a group oif 12 guys at a course for three straight days. The course was sopping wet all three days due to heavy rains prior to our arrival, and rain each night. The courses got a little better eash day, but still played very long, wet and muddy. The third day happened to be a Saturday, and the course got a lot more play. Saturday was the only day there was a PCC adjustment. So I'm thinking the WHS needs to see a minimum number of rounds before issuing a PCC, and that number needs to be well more than eight rounds posted.

[davep043]

11 minutes ago, DLiver said:

I'm not sure PCC is calculated on as few as eight posted rounds at a given course on a given day (I know that's what the WHS says, but...). I had the experience of playing with a group oif 12 guys at a course for three straight days. The course was sopping wet all three days due to heavy rains prior to our arrival, and rain each night. The courses got a little better eash day, but still played very long, wet and muddy. The third day happened to be a Saturday, and the course got a lot more play. Saturday was the only day there was a PCC adjustment. So I'm thinking the WHS needs to see a minimum number of rounds before issuing a PCC, and that number needs to be well more than eight rounds posted.

I'm thinking that when fewer scores are posted, they have to be further from "normal" to trigger a PCC adjustment.  More scores posted, larger sample size, a smaller deviation may trigger the same adjustment.  I have no reason to disbelieve, and it seems that your anecdote is consistent with that general principle.

52 minutes ago, VinnyG41 said:

Might not be worth it and having it is just giving people something to complain about that really doesn't matter at all.

Remember that the WHS is a big bundle of compromises between the six different handicap systems that existed previously.  Several of the previous handicap systems had some type of daily correction, so inclusion of some type of daily correction in the WHS is reasonable.  Even back in early 2020, I was told at a Handicap Seminar that less than 10% of rounds were expected to receive an adjustment, and the impact on handicap was likely to be minimal.  Nothing I've seen with the PCC over the last 2+ seasons has surprised me in the least.

 

[North Butte]

1 hour ago, Mr. Bean said:

 

Ok, let us broaden this a bit.

 

My view is that as PCC has a negligible effect on the handicaps over an extended period it is not working (as intended) and is a completely futile parameter in WHS. Prevailing conditions have and always have had an effect on the overall scores of that single day / competition but that effect will even out later on. Thus it is my firm opinion that any attempt to correct the deviations in the scores by introducing a rigid parameter is completely unnecessary especially in the current WHS with 8/20 scores to count.

 

Ugh, I have spoken!

 

Also, the GHIN system has no way of knowing which of the rounds that were posted that day have any relation to reality. The vast majority of scores posted to GHIN daily are not in competitions. So to an extent, the PCC will reflect any unusual proportion of vanity 'capping, ball rolling, putt picking up, free relief taking and/or solo round posting yahoos as it does an unusual degree of scoring difficulty.

 

It's easy to imagine a course where on a normal day there are 100 rounds posted, mostly from casual gimme-takers. But then it gets cold, rains off and on and blows a hoolie one day but there happens to be a competition that is played in spite of the conditions. So now not only are the comp participants shooting higher scores due to the weather, all the casual vanity 'cappers are going to stay home that day. 

 

Sounds like a recipe for an instant PCC +3 to me!

[Is Golf Fun or Work]

I doubt it works, we've played in some seriously silly conditions, like winds gusting to 45, or temp below 40* with 30 mph winds, never once I have seen any PCC adjustment.....not like I care either, just would expect on days most won't play, there's no PCC taken into the hdcp differential for that day.

[StudentGolfer4]

I think the system itself works. I don’t think people input enough scores to allow the system to work. 
 

In my limited experience, I have never had a PCC on a public course that was not a resort course (I have had it happen at pinehurst, and reunion in Florida). 
 

At private places where 30+ scores are posted from each day the PCC system seems to work. I have seen numerous + adjustments. 

[dlow206]

Never at my home course have I or anyone I know have received a PCC adjustment. Played through some really crappy sloppy conditions in the PNW. This includes puddles in the middle of the green that are basically impossible to put through and i wasn't going to try chipping over it. 

[karstens_ghost]

And while I'm sure a certain group here will tut-tut me for saying it again, if the algorithm was open-sourced, we would know if it's working.

 

Note I said open-sourced, not surrendering their intellectual property.

 

[North Butte]

All this is a symptom of trying to find compromises between a system based on attested competition scores and one based on just signing people up and letting them type numbers into an app. Some sort of playing conditions adjustment probably makes sense when calculating differentials from a large field competition. But you can't find a useful kinda-sorta-similar thing that works for all the random mixture of numbers in GHIN.

 

Like everything else about the WHS boondoggle, including USGA's no solo scores thing, the PCC is a bit of window dressing tossed in as a political compromise. Nobody ever expected it to actually accomplish anything concrete regarding handicap computation. It just accomplishes USGA saying, "See we met the rest of the world in the middle with our own playing conditions adjustment". 

[davep043]

5 hours ago, karstens_ghost said:

And while I'm sure a certain group here will tut-tut me for saying it again, if the algorithm was open-sourced, we would know if it's working.

 

Note I said open-sourced, not surrendering their intellectual property.

 

You would also need to be able to access every single score posted for each day.  Knowing the calculation method without knowing the data is pretty useless.

[karstens_ghost]

31 minutes ago, davep043 said:

You would also need to be able to access every single score posted for each day.  Knowing the calculation method without knowing the data is pretty useless.

 

You would need to know what numbers you're going to add up. Knowing how to do addition without knowing the numbers to add is pretty useless.

 

In places not known as the United States, daily scores are public to club members. This isn't rocket surgery. Only in America is it a black box. We play for money every week.

Edited June 1, 2022 by karstens_ghost

[jvincent]

12 minutes ago, karstens_ghost said:

 

You would need to know what numbers you're going to add up. Knowing how to do addition without knowing the numbers to add is pretty useless.

 

In places not known as the United States, daily scores are public to club members. This isn't rocket surgery. Only in America is it a black box. We play for money every week.

 

If you look somebody up in GHIN do you not see their scoring record? That's a surprise.

[North Butte]

2 minutes ago, jvincent said:

 

If you look somebody up in GHIN do you not see their scoring record? That's a surprise.

Yes, you can look up any golfer in GHIN and see their revision scores (typically their last 20) as well as the course and slope ratings, PCC, etc. for each round they posted.

[jvincent]

Thanks, that makes more sense.

[davep043]

10 minutes ago, jvincent said:

 

If you look somebody up in GHIN do you not see their scoring record? That's a surprise.

You can, but if you're not a member at the same club, you see only a month and year for each round, not the actual date.  In addition, even for members of your club, you can't tell when the score was posted.

So if you really want to get all the data, you need to look up every member for each day, and include non-members who played the course on those days.  

Edited June 1, 2022 by davep043

[jvincent]

2 minutes ago, davep043 said:

You can, but if you're not a member at the same club, you see only a month and year for each round, not the actual date.  In addition, even for members of your club, you can't tell when the score was posted.

 

Interesting. I just checked the Golf Canada app and it does the same thing.

 

I guess this was a WHS thing because I'm pretty sure we could see detailed scoring records before the WHS.

[davep043]

10 minutes ago, jvincent said:

Interesting. I just checked the Golf Canada app and it does the same thing.

I guess this was a WHS thing because I'm pretty sure we could see detailed scoring records before the WHS.

I'm not sure this changed with the WHS.  I believe its a privacy thing, golfers didn't want other folks to be able to tell which days they played.  Maybe a employer is seeing who played hooky, maybe a thief is looking for a pattern where a house is empty.  But to have peer review work, club members need to be able to see the specific dates of each round.

[Rigby48]

I've had it happen once.  A 9 hole round from our Tuesday night 9 hole match play league.  Conditions were tough, cold and windy and also the first match of the season early in the year.  Adjustment was +.5.  It would make sense that a lot of scores were impacted by conditions that day and also a high percentage of the scores because there weren't a lot of rounds earlier in the day on a Tuesday.  It could be that some other days when the conditions are tough in the morning or afternoon when someone plays they aren't tough all day so the overall average for the day doesn't warrant an adjustment. 

[bazinky]

My current theory is that the PCC correction calculation is overly sensitive to outliers, and may not properly account for the differential impact of weather on scores depending on the skill of the players that played that day. It probably only takes a couple of decent scores to prevent a correction going into place, and we have all seen instances where someone pulls a great round in some awful conditions. Additionally, some course conditions may tend to have a greater relative impact on the scoring of lower handicap golfers, while other conditions might have the opposite effect. Designing a statistical process that would account for this is not trivial, and I have zero confidence that the developers of the current handicap system have the expertise and/or the motivation to put in the required effort. 

 

  

[bcjim]

I'd just like to see which courses get adjusted on which days.

 

That doesn't seem to be a big ask. I suspect it would show that if I want to benefit from the PCC calculation, I have to join the fancy club across the street from the municipal courses I typically play.  

[StudentGolfer4]

I think we would all like to know the formula behind this. 
 

We know that you are only suppose to shoot below your handicap 20% of the time. So if there’s a 100 player field in bad weather and 80 players shoot over there course index (or maybe just index again we don’t know the formula) that still doesn’t seem like it would be enough to cause a PCC. 

[davep043]

1 hour ago, bcjim said:

I'd just like to see which courses get adjusted on which days.

Join your club's Handicap Committee.  If you have Admin access to the GHIN system, you can run a report showing all PCC corrections made in your state or region.  I just looked at Virginia for May, and I see both public and private clubs having had a PCC adjustment of some kind.

1 hour ago, StudentGolfer4 said:

I think we would all like to know the formula behind this. 

I think its generally a good idea to speak for yourself, not assume you speak for a group.  Many people who post to this thread have said quite clearly that they don't care to know the formula, including me.  As it is working now, it is a pretty inconsequential part of your Handicap Index.  That may be exactly as envisioned by the folks who developed the WHS, I don't know.

[DaveLeeNC]

4 hours ago, davep043 said:

You would also need to be able to access every single score posted for each day.  Knowing the calculation method without knowing the data is pretty useless.

 

I don't understand. If you know the calculation method, what is left to know? This is in the context of knowing the source code (which will absolutely define the calculation method, but might require a bit of very doable work) and protecting the USGA's IP. Is what the USGA trying to protect how well the algorithm matches the data that it came from? 

 

dave (had one PCC in the last 40'ish rounds of golf)