PCC change

[QEight]

In my last 50 HC rounds (2021-2022) I have had PCC adjustment four times. Twice 1 and once 2. None in "casual" HC rounds. Once in half serious competition and twice in "very" serious competition. Adjustment of 2 was on quite difficult course where for whatever reason most of the players played badly and over their HCP. Conditions itself were not that difficult, but I guess the course was unfamiliar to many and quite tight.

 

So perhaps I agree with @antipin that the PCC seems to kick in more on competitions where most players are not locals.

[Augster]

12 minutes ago, QEight said:

In my last 50 HC rounds (2021-2022) I have had PCC adjustment four times. Twice 1 and once 2. None in "casual" HC rounds. Once in half serious competition and twice in "very" serious competition. Adjustment of 2 was on quite difficult course where for whatever reason most of the players played badly and over their HCP. Conditions itself were not that difficult, but I guess the course was unfamiliar to many and quite tight.

 

So perhaps I agree with @antipin that the PCC seems to kick in more on competitions where most players are not locals.

This is exactly correct.
 

If you have a big tourney, one that closes down the course for the day, and it’s an open tourney so very few players are playing their home course, and they use golf genius to keep track, and post for everybody, there is nearly a 100% chance there will be a PCC that day. 

[EdgeUk]

Just throwing this down although I'm probably a good 6 months late to the conversation. 

 

As an Englishman playing a championship course weekly, I've never had a PCC adjustment. How can I be expected to score the same score in 4 layers in March in 6°c with 20mph wind+showers as I can playing in shorts in August?

 

Under CSS handicap used to change by as much as 4 shots because it was that much more difficult. PCC is not picking up on this. 

 

I'd also like to pose the hypothesis that bad weather affects mid-high handicappers less because "they miss anyway, statistically" so PCC should be weighted more towards the category 1 golfers who all of a sudden can't for example hole the putts they do normally because they keep being taken off line by random gusts of wind. 

[North Butte]

6 hours ago, EdgeUk said:

Just throwing this down although I'm probably a good 6 months late to the conversation. 

 

As an Englishman playing a championship course weekly, I've never had a PCC adjustment. How can I be expected to score the same score in 4 layers in March in 6°c with 20mph wind+showers as I can playing in shorts in August?

 

Under CSS handicap used to change by as much as 4 shots because it was that much more difficult. PCC is not picking up on this. 

 

I'd also like to pose the hypothesis that bad weather affects mid-high handicappers less because "they miss anyway, statistically" so PCC should be weighted more towards the category 1 golfers who all of a sudden can't for example hole the putts they do normally because they keep being taken off line by random gusts of wind. 

Oh boy, if you think cold and wind don't affect double-digit handicappers...well, it's obviously been a while since you were a double-digit handicapper. When your "random" ball striking typically involves a lot of toe shots on irons, open clubface shots with the driver and you're totally unable to make a decent knockdown shot the difference between 20C temps and 10mph breezes versus 10C and 25mph for me (as a 14hcp) is like 6-8 strokes minimum. 

[ThinkingPlus]

6 hours ago, EdgeUk said:

Just throwing this down although I'm probably a good 6 months late to the conversation. 

 

As an Englishman playing a championship course weekly, I've never had a PCC adjustment. How can I be expected to score the same score in 4 layers in March in 6°c with 20mph wind+showers as I can playing in shorts in August?

 

Under CSS handicap used to change by as much as 4 shots because it was that much more difficult. PCC is not picking up on this. 

 

I'd also like to pose the hypothesis that bad weather affects mid-high handicappers less because "they miss anyway, statistically" so PCC should be weighted more towards the category 1 golfers who all of a sudden can't for example hole the putts they do normally because they keep being taken off line by random gusts of wind. 

PCC is not based on weather. It is based on the posted scores vs. most probable scores for all players on the day of play. If the deviation between actual scores and expected scores is sufficiently large, then a PCC adjustment is made. A minimum of 8 posted scores is required before the PCC process is executed.

[scott_Donald]

4 hours ago, ThinkingPlus said:

PCC is not based on weather. It is based on the posted scores vs. most probable scores for all players on the day of play. If the deviation between actual scores and expected scores is sufficiently large, then a PCC adjustment is made. A minimum of 8 posted scores is required before the PCC process is executed.

 

Exactly so the biggest problem seems to be on the bad Scottish weather days for me, no one else puts a score in! Admittedly I don't put as many scores in as I did in Texas, now in Scotland, I also play much more match play golf than I did there. 

 

From what I have found it's hard to get the Scottish folk to change to recording, every non match play round and submitting it. Most golfers only do it in competitions still. The whole thing breaks the system. 

 

 

[ThinkingPlus]

9 minutes ago, scott_Donald said:

 

Exactly so the biggest problem seems to be on the bad Scottish weather days for me, no one else puts a score in! Admittedly I don't put as many scores in as I did in Texas, now in Scotland, I also play much more match play golf than I did there. 

 

From what I have found it's hard to get the Scottish folk to change to recording, every non match play round and submitting it. Most golfers only do it in competitions still. The whole thing breaks the system. 

 

 

I have never seen an algorithm fix a cultural issue. It's a challenge for sure.

[nsxguy]

5 hours ago, ThinkingPlus said:

PCC is not based on weather. It is based on the posted scores vs. most probable scores for all players on the day of play. If the deviation between actual scores and expected scores is sufficiently large, then a PCC adjustment is made. A minimum of 8 posted scores is required before the PCC process is executed.

 

I realize the PCC is a big secret but any chance you know how "they" arrive at the "most probable scores" for the day ?

[Newby]

5 hours ago, ThinkingPlus said:

PCC is not based on weather. It is based on the posted scores vs. most probable scores for all players on the day of play. If the deviation between actual scores and expected scores is sufficiently large, then a PCC adjustment is made. A minimum of 8 posted scores is required before the PCC process is executed.

I understood it was

 

.... most probable score for each individual player ... 

[ThinkingPlus]

6 minutes ago, nsxguy said:

 

I realize the PCC is a big secret but any chance you know how "they" arrive at the "most probable scores" for the day ?

I can't say 100% for sure because..., but here is how I would do it.

 

Take the database of all posted scores in GHIN for the last N years. Bin the scores by index. Create a differentials probability distribution for each index bin. Once you have the probability distribution you can compute the most likely differential and thus score for any CR/slope course.

 

Now compare actual score posted to expected score. Then you get some kind of weighted average and see how that compares to deviations from expectation. The weighting helps account for statistical significance of only 8 scores posted vs. many scores posted. I think they do something like this, but the details are...proprietary.

[ThinkingPlus]

2 minutes ago, Newby said:

I understood it was

 

.... most probable score for each individual player ... 

It is. They look at the most probable or expected score for each player that posts, look at deviations, then compute a PCC adjustment for the day's play for that course.

[Augster]

2 hours ago, ThinkingPlus said:

It is. They look at the most probable or expected score for each player that posts, look at deviations, then compute a PCC adjustment for the day's play for that course.

Yep. 
 

This is why I have always felt, “posting the formula” isn’t necessary. One would have to have access to the complete database of daily historical scores to compute whether a PCC adjustment is necessary. 
 

 

[cardoustie]

Just got PCC’d by +2 after first round of member member yesterday 

 

crazy … conditions were fine.  The pins were harder than normal

 

happened last year as well, +1 adjustment at that time.  
 

my note is that if players can’t roll the ball, and have to hole short putts, most members can’t sniff their handicaps

[bluedot]

1 hour ago, cardoustie said:

Just got PCC’d by +2 after first round of member member yesterday 

 

crazy … conditions were fine.  The pins were harder than normal

 

happened last year as well, +1 adjustment at that time.  
 

my note is that if players can’t roll the ball, and have to hole short putts, most members can’t sniff their handicaps

You’re exactly right.  Put a large number of golfers into a tournament situation, and you’ll have a LOT of guys playing fully under the Rules who normally don’t.  That’s a recipe for higher than expected scores, which triggers the PCC algorithm, regardless of weather.  
 

The other very common tournament/PCC scenario is when it’s on an unfamiliar course, especially a tougher one.  I played in a tournament this past Monday in the most beautiful weather imaginable, but on a course with extremely fast Bent grass greens, which not many courses in the SE have anymore, and that didn’t offer a practice round.  The guys in THIS tournament were/are pretty serious competitive golfers, but the scores were high and there was a +1 PCC.

 

In my experience, this is more common than weather as a PCC adjustment situation, if only because on days when the weather is so bad that scores are impacted, nobody plays.  If it’s an area where the wind ALWAYS blows, and/or it ALWAYS rains (aka Scotland) the scores are NOT unexpectedly high.

[iacas]

I wish people would stop even hinting at the weather playing any role whatsoever in the PCC.

 

As almost everyone knows here… it's just the scores. Weather can produce bad scores, but so can lots of other things: tournament pressure, an evil superintendent… whatever.

[North Butte]

18 minutes ago, iacas said:

I wish people would stop even hinting at the weather playing any role whatsoever in the PCC.

 

As almost everyone knows here… it's just the scores. Weather can produce bad scores, but so can lots of other things: tournament pressure, an evil superintendent… whatever.

...playing by the Rules...

[Augster]

10 hours ago, North Butte said:

...playing by the Rules...

That’s the worst of them, yes. 🙂

 

If you want to watch a “9” handicap fold up shop, just tell them they have to play them down and putt them out that day. They’ll be on a 90-watch after the 4th hole. 

[bluedot]

22 hours ago, North Butte said:

...playing by the Rules...

There is no way to overstate this.  And it works in both directions; guys who DO play fully under the Rules not only have more accurate indexes to begin with, but are much less bothered by the inevitable things that go wrong; great drive that ends up in a divot, missed short putt, etc.  Meanwhile, the guy with the vanity index is not only struggling with those same situations, but feeling self-imposed pressure because they aren’t scoring the way they think they should be.  

[bcjim]

On 11/2/2023 at 8:51 AM, iacas said:

I wish people would stop even hinting at the weather playing any role whatsoever in the PCC.

 

As almost everyone knows here… it's just the scores. Weather can produce bad scores, but so can lots of other things: tournament pressure, an evil superintendent… whatever.

Ridiculous.  Weather is the dominant factor especially cold, wind,  rain,  or a combination of those. 

You need only to look at professional tournament scores for evidence of this.  Days where the field plays poorly, weather is usually bad.

 

Amateur Tournaments on unfamiliar or tricked up courses are an obvious culprit too but for casual play,  weather is without a doubt the primary factor for PCC help kicking in.

 

For punitive adjustments,  it's usually very nice days and here easy course set up is probably a common factor too. 

 

 

[iacas]

8 hours ago, bcjim said:

Ridiculous.

 

No, it's not. Weather is not a direct factor in the PCC - it's literally just the scores agains the expected scores. The algorithm doesn't factor in the weather, it doesn't factor in whether it was a tournament, nothing. It takes the inputs of the number of golfers, the tees, the scores they shot, their expected scores… and it determines what PCC (if any) to output.

 

Weather is not a direct factor.

 

I've seen +2 and +3 PCCs on days with great weather… because the course is setup a bit tougher or it's a tournament and people crapped themselves… whatever. Beautiful weather, much higher than expected scoring.

 

8 hours ago, bcjim said:

Amateur Tournaments on unfamiliar or tricked up courses are an obvious culprit too but for casual play, weather is without a doubt the primary factor for PCC help kicking in.

 

That's not what I'm saying (and I don't really agree, either).

 

People often post something like "the weather was fine, why did we get a +1 PCC?" Because the algorithm has nothing to do with the actual weather.

 

That's all I'm saying.

[bluedot]

10 hours ago, bcjim said:

Ridiculous.  Weather is the dominant factor especially cold, wind,  rain,  or a combination of those. 

You need only to look at professional tournament scores for evidence of this.  Days where the field plays poorly, weather is usually bad.

 

Amateur Tournaments on unfamiliar or tricked up courses are an obvious culprit too but for casual play,  weather is without a doubt the primary factor for PCC help kicking in.

 

For punitive adjustments,  it's usually very nice days and here easy course set up is probably a common factor too. 

 

 

I have posted 133 rounds so far in 2023.

 

There have been only 10 with PCC adjustments.  8 of those 10 were tournament rounds, and all 8:were played in good weather; not cold, not rainy, not especially windy.  I have played 22 tournament rounds for the year, not counting interclub matches, so the PCC adjustment rate is 36.4% for tournament rounds, vs 1.8% for all other rounds, including some played in REALLY crappy weather.

 

You can draw your own conclusions about what is most likely to cause the PCC algorithm to kick in, but I don’t think it’s particularly mysterious.

[bcjim]

There are causes for the anomalous scores. The algorithm obviously does not know or care why there are anomalous scores but in nearly all cases of PCC adjustment, there is/are some reason(s) why the scores are anomalous.  

 

I will concede that for golfers that don't play (or post) in bad weather will have some other factor predominantly determining any PCC adjustments as will perhaps people that play tournaments on away courses often.

 

But clearly bad weather impacts golf scores. If you want to deny that, go ahead I guess.

[iacas]

14 minutes ago, bcjim said:

If you want to deny that, go ahead I guess.

 

Nobody's doing that.

[bluedot]

10 hours ago, bcjim said:

There are causes for the anomalous scores. The algorithm obviously does not know or care why there are anomalous scores but in nearly all cases of PCC adjustment, there is/are some reason(s) why the scores are anomalous.  

 

I will concede that for golfers that don't play (or post) in bad weather will have some other factor predominantly determining any PCC adjustments as will perhaps people that play tournaments on away courses often.

 

But clearly bad weather impacts golf scores. If you want to deny that, go ahead I guess.

I DO play and post in bad weather of all types; cold, wind, rain, and combinations of those.  There’s not much way to play as many rounds as I play each year (I average about 165 year in and year out) without playing in crappy weather.  Nobody is saying that bad weather conditions don’t impact scoring, but the PCC is playing conditions, NOT a “WCC” only.

 

IMO, two things are in play here.  One is that you are really underestimating the impact of tournament play, in which LARGE groups of golfers play an unfamiliar course, sometimes without even the benefit of a practice round, as well as playing fully under the Rules. 
 

But the second is perhaps that there are some mitigating circumstances that reduce the number of PCC adjustments due to weather ONLY.  For instance, it may be that the only guys playing at a given course on a given day with crappy weather are hard core guys who are used to those conditions and have gear for it, as well as perhaps being better players to begin with.  It also might be that on bad weather days players move up a set of tees, or just practice, or only play a few holes, or simply don’t post a score at all; the PCC algorithm requires at least 8 posted scores to trigger.

 

In any case, you are stuck with the data; there are FAR fewer PCC adjustments for weather than most people expect.  That doesn’t mean weather doesn’t impact scoring; we all know it does.  But it DOES mean that, for any number of reasons, weather is not only not the primary reason for PCC adjustments, but that weather isn’t even close to being the main reason.  Just a fact.

Edited November 4, 2023 by bluedot

[North Butte]

The group I play with shrinks down a bit during winter but at least a handful will show up on a 40F, windy day with the course muddy from overnight rain, for instance. In those conditions, especially if only a small group shows up, they will typically go out and "just play" without any bets and without turning in scorecards. And with copious preferred lies and such.

 

Yeah, I know. Not under the Rules of Golf, yada, yada, yada. But my point is, on days like that VERY few rounds are posted at my home course. If people were out there trying to play it down and grind out a score there would be a massive PCC needed but nobody's interested on those days.

[Schulzmc]

This thread is fascinating. I always assumed they were using some sort of third party weather data to decide whether to have the PCC adjustments “kick in.” To hear that it is simply score based is a little disappointing. As has been pointed out, simply playing in tournament conditions raises scores for many. I don’t believe that was the intent of the PCC adjustment. In fact, the USGA site says:

 

”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.”

 

Note it says the intent was primarily to correct for weather or course set up. NOT for people posting higher scores due to pressure or the fact that they normally take gimme putts, etc. 

 

I had the case last year where I shot a career best round during a tournament at our club. The scores were mostly higher than average and I got a PCC in addition to the lower than normal index for the day. That didn’t seem fair to me as the course was set up in a normal way and the weather was perfect. Now I understand why.

 

Perhaps there needs to be some modification to the system? Like the course pro could “veto” the PCC due to normal course conditions?

[bluedot]

7 minutes ago, Schulzmc said:

This thread is fascinating. I always assumed they were using some sort of third party weather data to decide whether to have the PCC adjustments “kick in.” To hear that it is simply score based is a little disappointing. As has been pointed out, simply playing in tournament conditions raises scores for many. I don’t believe that was the intent of the PCC adjustment. In fact, the USGA site says:

 

”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.”

 

Note it says the intent was primarily to correct for weather or course set up. NOT for people posting higher scores due to pressure or the fact that they normally take gimme putts, etc. 

 

I had the case last year where I shot a career best round during a tournament at our club. The scores were mostly higher than average and I got a PCC in addition to the lower than normal index for the day. That didn’t seem fair to me as the course was set up in a normal way and the weather was perfect. Now I understand why.

 

Perhaps there needs to be some modification to the system? Like the course pro could “veto” the PCC due to normal course conditions?

I take your point, but there’s no way to separate out course setup from other tournament conditions.  Greens, for instance, can be double cut and rolled on a tournament day, and be significantly faster than usual.  Hole locations can be more or less difficult.  The course could be wetter or drier than normal.  At the same time, you could have competitive golfers who didn’t get a practice round opportunity, and/or guys who are not completely comfortable playing fully under the Rules.

 

Regardless of the wording, the intent of the PCC is to make adjustments so that handicaps aren’t impacted disproportionately by one round when a large number of golfers post higher or lower than expected scores.  It doesn’t really happen that much anyway; in my case, well under 10% of my rounds for the year, though almost all of those are tournament rounds.  

All of this is in an effort to make handicaps more accurate and equitable, and I can’t imagine that there’s any bad news in that.  The PCC algorithm is, for lack of a better word, very conservative in its application, so nobody should get too upset about the wording or mechanics of it.

 

BTW, I had the exact same situation as you this past week.  Had a great round in a tournament, and then there was a PCC adjustment of +1.  As I posted earlier, the weather couldn’t possibly have been better, but it was a very difficult course and setup, and the club had not offered a practice round to the field, though I was able to play one with a member/friend plus having played the course many times before.  The irony was that the PCC adjustment took the differential for the round to EXACTLY my current index.

[North Butte]

1 hour ago, Schulzmc said:

This thread is fascinating. I always assumed they were using some sort of third party weather data to decide whether to have the PCC adjustments “kick in.” To hear that it is simply score based is a little disappointing. As has been pointed out, simply playing in tournament conditions raises scores for many. I don’t believe that was the intent of the PCC adjustment. In fact, the USGA site says:

 

”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.”

 

Note it says the intent was primarily to correct for weather or course set up. NOT for people posting higher scores due to pressure or the fact that they normally take gimme putts, etc. 

 

I had the case last year where I shot a career best round during a tournament at our club. The scores were mostly higher than average and I got a PCC in addition to the lower than normal index for the day. That didn’t seem fair to me as the course was set up in a normal way and the weather was perfect. Now I understand why.

 

Perhaps there needs to be some modification to the system? Like the course pro could “veto” the PCC due to normal course conditions?

Gee, the USGA does something that directly contradicts the blah-blah-blah in their press releases. Nothing new there.

[rogolf]

9 minutes ago, North Butte said:

Gee, the USGA does something that directly contradicts the blah-blah-blah in their press releases. Nothing new there.

That info that you're referring to was very likely the output of all the national golf associations involved in putting the World Handicapping System together.  It wasn't done solely by the USGA.

And I'm confident that the wording was the "party line" for all those associations.

Edited November 4, 2023 by rogolf

[Shilgy]

1 hour ago, North Butte said:

Gee, the USGA does something that directly contradicts the blah-blah-blah in their press releases. Nothing new there.

 

3 hours ago, Schulzmc said:

This thread is fascinating. I always assumed they were using some sort of third party weather data to decide whether to have the PCC adjustments “kick in.” To hear that it is simply score based is a little disappointing. As has been pointed out, simply playing in tournament conditions raises scores for many. I don’t believe that was the intent of the PCC adjustment. In fact, the USGA site says:

 

”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.”

 

Note it says the intent was primarily to correct for weather or course set up. NOT for people posting higher scores due to pressure or the fact that they normally take gimme putts, etc. 

 

I had the case last year where I shot a career best round during a tournament at our club. The scores were mostly higher than average and I got a PCC in addition to the lower than normal index for the day. That didn’t seem fair to me as the course was set up in a normal way and the weather was perfect. Now I understand why.

 

Perhaps there needs to be some modification to the system? Like the course pro could “veto” the PCC due to normal course conditions?

There is no contradiction though. 

as Schulz posted

 

In fact, the USGA site says:

 

”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 you go by the beginning of the sentence it’s the scores that matter…and they go on to explain reasons why the scores may be higher or lower…NOT that the reasons are basis of the PCC adjustment.