Is the handicap PCC working?

[North Butte]

5 minutes ago, klebs01 said:

The days most likely to have an adjustment are member guests and club comps because of more guests with posted rounds (mg) or players playing a different format, rules, and pressure than most of their handicap rounds.  

Of course to the extent that's true, then the "playing conditions" part of "PCC" is, strictly speaking, a euphemism. Someone posting nine shots over their handicap because it's one of the four rounds a year where they don't take a breakfast ball, roll them out of divots and pick up 2-foot gimmes is nothing to with conditions of the course or of the weather!

[klebs01]

6 minutes ago, North Butte said:

Of course to the extent that's true, then the "playing conditions" part of "PCC" is, strictly speaking, a euphemism. Someone posting nine shots over their handicap because it's one of the four rounds a year where they don't take a breakfast ball, roll them out of divots and pick up 2-foot gimmes is nothing to with conditions of the course or of the weather!

Following the rules is a new “playing condition” for them. 🤣

[North Butte]

2 minutes ago, klebs01 said:

Following the rules is a new “playing condition” for them. 🤣

There was a really bad movie 10-15 years ago called Mystery Men. About a bunch of really low-rent superheros with useless "powers". 

 

One of them was The Invisible Boy because, well, his power was turning invisible. At a crucial moment in the plot, they stand there waiting on him to turn invisible and he says, "I can't do it if anybody is looking!". That's like a lot of handicaps, I think.

[nsxguy]

2 hours ago, North Butte said:

The USGA certainly know what they're doing. I just object to the fact what "what they are doing" is often something other than they claim to be doing. I have no doubt if it were USGA's goal, they could create a very fine handicapping system based on attested, peer reviewed, competitive rounds and designed to provide valid handicaps for competition.

 

But they'd rather keep the system they have because it's an easy sell to the "track my progress" solo artists and vanity 'capping fantasists. Also keeps the odd sandbagger from having to work too hard on maintaining his index. 

 

Haven't you yourself told us the myriad problems with attestation, peer reviewing and "cultural" difference in playing golf here in the USA vs. other countries where competitions are always monitored, only comps included, etc. ?

 

Or am I mistaken ?

 

Your personal experience seems to be of the more casual comp thing rather than organized, more "serious" comps, yet you seem "worried" about this quite a bit. I have to wonder why you're  banging on this same drum so much.

 

I guess I'd understand it better if you were more "hard core". Like one of our scratch players who can't stand losing to a 15. Or even a 5.

[North Butte]

Just now, nsxguy said:

 

Haven't you yourself told us the myriad problems with attestation, peer reviewing and "cultural" difference in playing golf here in the USA vs. other countries where competitions are always monitored, only comps included, etc. ?

 

Or am I mistaken ?

 

Your personal experience seems to be of the more casual comp thing rather than organized, more "serious" comps, yet you seem "worried" about this quite a bit. I have to wonder why you're  banging on this same drum so much.

 

I guess I'd understand it better if you were more "hard core". Like one of our scratch players who can't stand losing to a 15. Or even a 5.

I just want to be able to look in GHIN and tell the difference between peer reviewed scores and made up numbers. It’s that simple. 
 

[Newby]

2 hours ago, DaveLeeNC said:

 

Given the lack of transparency, "if they changed the algorithm, how would you (anyone outside the system) know". 

 

dave

Probably because they told us it had been changed.

Of course they did not tell us what the change was. As we didn't know what it was before it doesn't matter what it is now. Just that we should see a difference.

[DaveLeeNC]

7 minutes ago, Newby said:

Probably because they told us it had been changed.

Of course they did not tell us what the change was. As we didn't know what it was before it doesn't matter what it is now. Just that we should see a difference.

 

Given how very rare adjustments are, the change would have to be absolutely HUGE for it to be noticeable. 50% more adjustments - it is going to take a really big sample size to find that. 

 

dave

[cardoustie]

My score was adjusted twice in our member member, one a +3 and one at +1 in round 2

 

total joke.  Playing conditions perfect with almost zero wind

 

i think the field shot a million because …. No mullies, no rolling it, no gimmies 

 

This can’t be why PCC was designed 

 

my partner and I won the gross by 4 shots fwiw 

[North Butte]

5 minutes ago, cardoustie said:

My score was adjusted twice in our member member, one a +3 and one at +1 in round 2

 

total joke.  Playing conditions perfect with almost zero wind

 

i think the field shot a million because …. No mullies, no rolling it, no gimmies 

 

This can’t be why PCC was designed 

 

my partner and I won the gross by 4 shots fwiw 

And in that case it's going to help those vanity 'cappers save a little of their vanity by not letting their indices go up as much as it should. 

[ThinkingPlus]

7 minutes ago, cardoustie said:

My score was adjusted twice in our member member, one a +3 and one at +1 in round 2

 

total joke.  Playing conditions perfect with almost zero wind

 

i think the field shot a million because …. No mullies, no rolling it, no gimmies 

 

This can’t be why PCC was designed 

 

my partner and I won the gross by 4 shots fwiw 

Congrats. Nice win!

[nsxguy]

4 hours ago, cardoustie said:

My score was adjusted twice in our member member, one a +3 and one at +1 in round 2

 

total joke.  Playing conditions perfect with almost zero wind

 

i think the field shot a million because …. No mullies, no rolling it, no gimmies 

 

This can’t be why PCC was designed 

 

my partner and I won the gross by 4 shots fwiw 

 

At the end of each day, the playing conditions calculation takes place automatically to determine if scores made at the course were significantly higher or lower than the expected scores of the players who made them, primarily due to weather and/or course set up

 

"Member-member" is a pretty important tournament, no ? A tournament itself could result in higher scores simply due to the pressure the players put on themselves.

 

And was the course set up more difficult than usual ?

 

Sounds like it might have been with "member-member" and the fact you trounced the field for gross.

 

And in my experience most players under-perform when the pressure's on.

[cardoustie]

The primary difference was tougher than usual pins and the rough is up for stage 2 LPGA q school

 

however, the course is way WAY harder when the wind blows as usual

 

i wonder if the algorithm catches single large postings from golf genius … 112 guys for us as an example .. maybe a blip in the system which is why event scores cause PCC adjustments

 

145 other rounds this year … no other PCC adjustments … low scores shot at member guests as well … 71 on a 74 rating for example

 

my +3 adjustment was a 72 on a 70 rating ….

 

 

[mark m]

47 minutes ago, cardoustie said:

The primary difference was tougher than usual pins and the rough is up for stage 2 LPGA q school

 

however, the course is way WAY harder when the wind blows as usual

 

i wonder if the algorithm catches single large postings from golf genius … 112 guys for us as an example .. maybe a blip in the system which is why event scores cause PCC adjustments

 

145 other rounds this year … no other PCC adjustments … low scores shot at member guests as well … 71 on a 74 rating for example

 

my +3 adjustment was a 72 on a 70 rating ….

 

 

 

Hi Card,

 

Regarding the round with the +3 adjustment - what were the scores of the lowest Index golfers? I know you are low yourself, but did you have the low gross score that day?

 

I had no PCC adjustments this season. In the past at my club, any plus adjustments seem to happen when the lowest guys posted poor scores. In one round in particular in 2021, a few of us had poor scores even though the conditions were benign and other mid to high guys played just fine. So it seemed at that time to be heavily weighted to the scores posted by the lowest handicaps - who also tend to be the most consistent. But not always! And the calculation has been tweaked since.

 

Congrats on your good play.

MM

[Augster]

I remember the USGA/R&A put out a message that the PCC was being tweaked to affect 10% of scores or some such. 
 

I guess we’ll see next year. I’m skeptical. 10% from 1% seems a bit extreme. Are they going to adjust down every bad score/non-keepers just to say they are at 10%? I just don’t see where they’d adjust any in the 8/20 for the most part.  I guess we’ll see. 

[Is Golf Fun or Work]

We finally found a round in one of our regular group member's score.....the only one we've ever seen.  Funny part being, the round was at an 'away' course, and the weather was absolutely perfect, 85*, wind about 10 mph.  So I guess it adjusts for perfect weather, cuz we've played in 50mph winds, freezing temps, etc and never have seen any PCC adjustment other than the "it's too nice outside to play golf" round mentioned earlier.

[sui generis]

14 minutes ago, Is Golf Fun or Work said:

We finally found a round in one of our regular group member's score.....the only one we've ever seen.  Funny part being, the round was at an 'away' course, and the weather was absolutely perfect, 85*, wind about 10 mph.  So I guess it adjusts for perfect weather, cuz we've played in 50mph winds, freezing temps, etc and never have seen any PCC adjustment other than the "it's too nice outside to play golf" round mentioned earlier.

 

PCC is not anecdote based. Here's what it is:

Q. What is the playing conditions calculation (PCC) and how does it work?

 

A. At the end of each day, the playing conditions calculation takes place automatically to determine if scores made at the course were significantly higher or lower than the expected scores of the players who made them, primarily due to weather and/or course set up.

 

If scores were abnormally low or high, a PCC adjustment between -1 and +3 will be applied in the calculation of Score Differentials™ of everyone who played that day. A negative (-) adjustment means the course played easier than expected and a positive (+) adjustment means the course played more difficult than expected. A PCC of 0 means the course played as expected, which will be the case on most days.

 

The PCC uses scoring data so no action is required by the club/course staff or golfer (except for posting scores), Includes only scores made by players with a Handicap Index® of 36.0 or below, Considers both 9-hole and 18-hole scores in the calculation, and only takes place if at least 8 scores were posted on a given day.

(Rule 5.6, Rules of Handicapping)

 

https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/handicapping/world-handicap-system/world-handicap-system-usga-golf-faqs/faqs---what-is-the-playing-conditions-calculation--pcc--.html

[rogolf]

1 hour ago, Is Golf Fun or Work said:

We finally found a round in one of our regular group member's score.....the only one we've ever seen.  Funny part being, the round was at an 'away' course, and the weather was absolutely perfect, 85*, wind about 10 mph.  So I guess it adjusts for perfect weather, cuz we've played in 50mph winds, freezing temps, etc and never have seen any PCC adjustment other than the "it's too nice outside to play golf" round mentioned earlier.

PCC is not restricted to weather impacts. It is purely related to scores reported for handicap purposes at that course on that day. 
(sui has covered it all very well)

Edited November 14, 2022 by rogolf

[Is Golf Fun or Work]

I find it interesting that of the 60 rounds + of golf we've played this year to date, only a single round had PCC....so whatever it's for, doesn't seem to be of much value or significance.

[North Butte]

7 minutes ago, Is Golf Fun or Work said:

I find it interesting that of the 60 rounds + of golf we've played this year to date, only a single round had PCC....so whatever it's for, doesn't seem to be of much value or significance.

If the change was at the beginning of 2022 it's made no difference. I think my count is 2 out of 60-ish this year and it was 4 out of 120-ish in 2021. A little over 3% before and after the change (and all by one stroke). 

[bcjim]

16 hours ago, Is Golf Fun or Work said:

We finally found a round in one of our regular group member's score.....the only one we've ever seen.  Funny part being, the round was at an 'away' course, and the weather was absolutely perfect, 85*, wind about 10 mph.  So I guess it adjusts for perfect weather, cuz we've played in 50mph winds, freezing temps, etc and never have seen any PCC adjustment other than the "it's too nice outside to play golf" round mentioned earlier.

Same, and I won't rehash all my PCC grievances again except to say, I won't have any confidence in it until they make public a list of courses that receive a PCC adjustment every day.  I suspect doing so would expose the flaws in the system so I'm not holding my breath.

 

On the other hand, amusingly, I have NOT had any adjustments for many months. After they, according to reports, were going to tweak it to make it more responsive. Hilarious.

[North Butte]

It's just another case of them doing all sort of clever, subtle little tweaks to their system to try to fine-tune every detail but it's all wasted because the data they're basing it on is a bunch of non-peer-reviewed arbitrary numbers typed into an app by people who in many cases wouldn't know how to play and keep score by the Rules if you paid them a million bucks. 

 

If 140 rounds are played at my local muni today and 60 of them are posted to GHIN, what number of those do we think are within a stroke or two of playing it down, putting it out and strictly following the Rules of Golf? A dozen maybe? If that. 

 

So how is their algorithm going to know if the actual "playing conditions" were one stroke easier or harder than normal by looking at 60 scores, the vast majority of which are vanity 'capped by several strokes or more? 

 

With apologies to Andrew Gelman, the whole PCC thing is an example of a Gelman's Kangaroo problem...

Quote

 you're essentially trying to use a bathroom scale to weigh a feather---and the feather is resting loosely in the pouch of a kangaroo that is vigorously jumping up and down

 

Edited November 15, 2022 by North Butte

[DaveLeeNC]

50 minutes ago, North Butte said:

you're essentially trying to use a bathroom scale to weigh a feather---and the feather is resting loosely in the pouch of a kangaroo that is vigorously jumping up and down

 

(IMHO) the fact that posted scores are of 'low quality' does not necessarily mean that the PCC calculation is of 'low quality'. For example if Joe VanityCapper always picks up putts inside 3', this is the basis of his index. If there is something special about "today's setup" that makes 3 foot putts unusually hard then that will be missed. But that issue really does not come to the level of the analogy quoted. But if the rules of the competition change that behavior (e.g., member/guest) - that is different. 

 

Based on all that I have seen there is very little value here WRT PCC - other than having 'fixed' an internal argument when the new handicap rules were agreed to. But the additional variable typically introduced by Joe VanityCapper is not the problem here (again IMHO). 

 

dave

 

ps. Just for grins look up 'dithering' where truly random noise is added to digital files representing audio or video and it truly improves the quality of the resulting video or audio rendering. It isn't really related to this question - but it is fascinating anyway. 

[klebs01]

3 hours ago, bcjim said:

Same, and I won't rehash all my PCC grievances again except to say, I won't have any confidence in it until they make public a list of courses that receive a PCC adjustment every day.  I suspect doing so would expose the flaws in the system so I'm not holding my breath.

 

On the other hand, amusingly, I have NOT had any adjustments for many months. After they, according to reports, were going to tweak it to make it more responsive. Hilarious.

changes to the algorithm weren’t made months ago. That’s new. 
 

what would you hope to get from the list of courses with adjustments? Location has nothing to do with the PCC formula. 

[bcjim]

Looks like end of August (?), so 2.5 months if correct.

 

In a course dense area such information would illustrate that golfers playing on courses with little play and/or few scores turned in (ie some Munis and super exclusive clubs) are basically "ineligible" for the PCC.

 

The PCC is nearly entirely weather driven and the weather doesn't vary by golf course in a county or metropolitan area.  So awful day but less than (8 or whatever) scores turned in at your course? Too bad.

 

 

 

 

[rogolf]

6 minutes ago, bcjim said:

Looks like end of August (?), so 2.5 months if correct.

 

In a course dense area such information would illustrate that golfers playing on courses with little play and/or few scores turned in (ie some Munis and super exclusive clubs) are basically "ineligible" for the PCC.

 

The PCC is nearly entirely weather driven and the weather doesn't vary by golf course in a county or metropolitan area.  So awful day but less than (8 or whatever) scores turned in at your course? Too bad.

 

 

 

 

"PCC" is nearly entirely weather driven"?  It's exclusively driven by scores reported on that course for that day and the probability that those scores are more or less than expected.  Weather may well be one of the causes for score differences, but it is not the only factor - others could include length, hole locations green speeds, competitions versus casual play, Rules of golf followed or not followed.

[Newby]

5 minutes ago, rogolf said:

"PCC" is nearly entirely weather driven"?  It's exclusively driven by scores reported on that course for that day and the probability that those scores are more or less than expected.  

I gather it looks at the score range expected by each individual player.

[bcjim]

23 minutes ago, rogolf said:

"PCC" is nearly entirely weather driven"?  It's exclusively driven by scores reported on that course for that day and the probability that those scores are more or less than expected.  Weather may well be one of the causes for score differences, but it is not the only factor - others could include length, hole locations green speeds, competitions versus casual play, Rules of golf followed or not followed.

 

It says it right in the description and its also pretty obvious that weather is the primary factor. I'm sure PCC is triggered by other things at times but weather is clearly the most common thing (by far) that would cause higher than expected scores. And even occasionally lower than expected.

 

 

A. At the end of each day, the playing conditions calculation takes place automatically to determine if scores made at the course were significantly higher or lower than the expected scores of the players who made them, primarily due to weather and/or course set up.

Edited November 15, 2022 by bcjim

[North Butte]

C'mon guys, the "PC" in the name stands for Playing Conditions. It is totally supposed to adjust unusual "conditions", specifically weather and course setup. It is derived from how CONGU used to assign a SSS specific to each competition, again mostly to reflect course conditions and weather. 

 

The fact that USGA does it auto-magically by depending on whatever numbers are typed into the GHIN app that day means it the PCC has a very difficult time of reflecting course conditions, weather and setup because of all the junk in GHIN. But don't try to retcon that junk into being part of the intention behind PCC. The apologetics for USGA in this forum never ceases to amaze. 

[rogolf]

23 minutes ago, North Butte said:

C'mon guys, the "PC" in the name stands for Playing Conditions. It is totally supposed to adjust unusual "conditions", specifically weather and course setup. It is derived from how CONGU used to assign a SSS specific to each competition, again mostly to reflect course conditions and weather. 

 

The fact that USGA does it auto-magically by depending on whatever numbers are typed into the GHIN app that day means it the PCC has a very difficult time of reflecting course conditions, weather and setup because of all the junk in GHIN. But don't try to retcon that junk into being part of the intention behind PCC. The apologetics for USGA in this forum never ceases to amaze. 

IIRC, Australia also had a daily conditions corrector. 
I believe that each of these “adjustments” are based on reported scores for the day. 
I also suspect that variance (actual score - expected score) for lower handicaps is weighted more than variances for higher handicaps. 

[nsxguy]

8 hours ago, bcjim said:

 

It says it right in the description and its also pretty obvious that weather is the primary factor. I'm sure PCC is triggered by other things at times but weather is clearly the most common thing (by far) that would cause higher than expected scores. And even occasionally lower than expected.

 

 

A. At the end of each day, the playing conditions calculation takes place automatically to determine if scores made at the course were significantly higher or lower than the expected scores of the players who made them, primarily due to weather and/or course set up.

 

What ?

 

"and/or course set up" doesn't matter ?