Scratch/Plus Handicap amateur male golfer vs. Nelly Korda (LGPA)

[Hawkeye77]

On 1/26/2024 at 7:49 AM, driveandputtmachine said:

I played D1 golf(mid-late 90's), was a +3.8, played US AM and state AM's, never won anything, but had some decent finishes.  Through my dad's company when I was in college I got to play in one men's pro-am and three women's pro-ams while in college.  Back then as a +3.8 D1 college player I would have put myself up against middle of the road LPGA players and think it would have been 50-50.  I shot a round of 62 once, and a bunch of mid 60's rounds from 6700-7200 yards.

 

Flash forward 2010+ and I was back to a plus +1.3, played some state am events, best finish was a Top 15 in the GA Pub Links.  Through my company I got to play in a LPGA pro-am and I know I would've gotten hammered by just about any LPGA player.  Sure on my best days I could beat quite a few, but even as a +1.3 I know how bad my bad days are.  If we played 20 times I would've won maybe four, and the other 16 been beaten.  During that 2 year time span I shot numerous rounds of 68-69 from 6700-7200 yards, but also quite a few upper 70's rounds(that magically get thrown out).

 

ANYONE who didn't/doesn't play high level AM golf and thinks random Joe at their club who is a + and has never played in a big event could hang with a LPGA player is fooling themselves.  There is literally no chance.  Sure a former D1/D2 player maybe a few years out of college golf could, but there is a huge difference between, A + at your home course(95% of rounds there), A traveling + and A traveling + that plays in US and State am events.

 

For reference now, I am 48.  I play less than I would like, had wrist surgery a few years back, and currently carry around a 4 handicap, every winter it creeps up, and then by the fall it is between a 1-2.  I have caddied in a few ladies Pro events(sumetra/epson) and played a few more pro-ams, and I know there is no chance I beat an LPGA player even once out of 20 rounds.

One of the best answers ever to yet another version of a done to death question that not enough will read or retain. 

[Fairways_and_Greens]

On 1/10/2024 at 11:44 AM, nikegolfer93 said:

For those who don't know Grant Horvat is one of the better YT golfers and he's a pretty cool guy from all accounts. 

He plays to about a scratch or +1

He plays against Nelly from the same tees and she still easily beats him. I honestly still don't get why women golf is more popular but they can flat out play golf. 

My golf viewing is: men’s majors, LPGA, men’s highlights, in that order. 

[PlusGolferUk]

D1 golf in the 90s 😂. This US golf system that we have had to bring in to play over here is also terrible so handicaps are now misrepresented. Uk old system was great. A scratch handicapper with your system was more like a 4/5 on UK handicap system.  Was funny playing amateur events with all these US guys coming over and shooting 82 off plus 6/7. Anyway played with a few female tour players and they play to about a plus 2 standard. An elite amateur annihilates any lpga tour player

[PlusGolferUk]

On 1/21/2024 at 12:16 PM, pingbling23 said:

 

Edited January 30 by PlusGolferUk

[driveandputtmachine]

16 hours ago, PlusGolferUk said:

D1 golf in the 90s 😂. This US golf system that we have had to bring in to play over here is also terrible so handicaps are now misrepresented. Uk old system was great. A scratch handicapper with your system was more like a 4/5 on UK handicap system.  Was funny playing amateur events with all these US guys coming over and shooting 82 off plus 6/7. Anyway played with a few female tour players and they play to about a plus 2 standard. An elite amateur annihilates any lpga tour player

I played with a few non US players in the 90's on my team and plenty of other players from other countries.  My understanding on the UK system in the 90's was it was based on ALL competition rounds and just a few normal exceptional rounds.  Not sure how that system is so much better

 

In D1 college golf in the 90's roughly 80% of our rounds were competition rounds, either in a NCAA tourney, State or national am event or in a qualifying tourney to determine who was playing the upcoming tournament.   All are against players that could go out and shoot 6 or more under easily.  Playing against other top notch players the nerves were still there for qualifying, not like it was in the State AM match play or in the US AM, but still there.   These US guys as a +6 that were coming over and shooting 82 were the + golfers at their club and obviously were vanity handicaps, not elite Amateurs.  Guys used to pressure from US, state am, or NCAA  events which I played for numerous years isn't going over and shooting in the 80's very often.  Of course they do sometimes as EVERYONE has bad days.  Elite AM bad days are worse than professional bad days

 

A current elite amateur(see the dude that just won on the PGA Tour) is still super inconsistent compared to what I have seen from LPGA players.  Sure on their best day from the same tees that guy destroys an LPGA player, the problem is I have seen plenty of ELITE Am's shoot in the upper 70's.  If it is just one round ANYONE can beat just about anyone in this scenario (ELITE AM vs LPGA) in a one day match.

[Hawkeye77]

19 hours ago, PlusGolferUk said:

D1 golf in the 90s 😂. This US golf system that we have had to bring in to play over here is also terrible so handicaps are now misrepresented. Uk old system was great. A scratch handicapper with your system was more like a 4/5 on UK handicap system.  Was funny playing amateur events with all these US guys coming over and shooting 82 off plus 6/7. Anyway played with a few female tour players and they play to about a plus 2 standard. An elite amateur annihilates any lpga tour player

Nonsense. I played in a comp several years ago and the course near Troon was happy to use my USGA handicap - same number as one of the guys from Northern Ireland I played with and our games were strikingly similar -  and conversations with other places and golfers didn’t suggest the divide you are asserting (assuming people diligent about maintaining a proper handicap) was all that dramatic. 

[PedronNiall]

Where'd the drama llama come from? Guy's been all over this section trying to stir the pot.

[PlusGolferUk]

16 hours ago, PedronNiall said:

Where'd the drama llama come from? Guy's been all over this section trying to stir the pot.

Not stirring the pot. Cam Young is overrated and LPGA standard is overrated. You put the whole LPGA tour field in the Masters - zero make the cut

[PlusGolferUk]

On 1/30/2024 at 2:27 PM, driveandputtmachine said:

I played with a few non US players in the 90's on my team and plenty of other players from other countries.  My understanding on the UK system in the 90's was it was based on ALL competition rounds and just a few normal exceptional rounds.  Not sure how that system is so much better

 

In D1 college golf in the 90's roughly 80% of our rounds were competition rounds, either in a NCAA tourney, State or national am event or in a qualifying tourney to determine who was playing the upcoming tournament.   All are against players that could go out and shoot 6 or more under easily.  Playing against other top notch players the nerves were still there for qualifying, not like it was in the State AM match play or in the US AM, but still there.   These US guys as a +6 that were coming over and shooting 82 were the + golfers at their club and obviously were vanity handicaps, not elite Amateurs.  Guys used to pressure from US, state am, or NCAA  events which I played for numerous years isn't going over and shooting in the 80's very often.  Of course they do sometimes as EVERYONE has bad days.  Elite AM bad days are worse than professional bad days

 

A current elite amateur(see the dude that just won on the PGA Tour) is still super inconsistent compared to what I have seen from LPGA players.  Sure on their best day from the same tees that guy destroys an LPGA player, the problem is I have seen plenty of ELITE Am's shoot in the upper 70's.  If it is just one round ANYONE can beat just about anyone in this scenario (ELITE AM vs LPGA) in a one day match.

 

On 1/30/2024 at 5:18 PM, Hawkeye77 said:

Nonsense. I played in a comp several years ago and the course near Troon was happy to use my USGA handicap - same number as one of the guys from Northern Ireland I played with and our games were strikingly similar -  and conversations with other places and golfers didn’t suggest the divide you are asserting (assuming people diligent about maintaining a proper handicap) was all that dramatic. 

Also commenting that your game is similar to a UK player comparing WHS to old UK system is just stupid.

 

You lot don’t have the data we have evidence of using both systems. 2/3/4 handicappers are now scratch handicapper. I was plus 2 on old system I am now plus 5 and play once a month. Its terrible. Your system gets rid of 12 bad scores out your last 20. That doesn’t represent someone’s ability in my opinion. But whatever makes you feel better 😂😂

[Ty_Webb]

Neill?

 

Handicap system is supposed to measure potential, not necessarily ability. 

[ThinkingPlus]

1 minute ago, Ty_Webb said:

Neill?

 

Handicap system is supposed to measure potential, not necessarily ability. 

Well, not exactly. The handicap system's purpose is to more or less equalize outcome of match play across all handicaps indices. For example, a 12 can play a 5 in match play and have roughly a 50-50 chance of winning. However, secondarily, the handicap system does provide a reasonable measure of ability.

 

The 0.96 factor was removed under WHS when the number of counting scores dropped from 10 to 8. Some folks indicated that those factors cancelled, but I thought that was a stretch. I also think the ruling bodies removed the "potential" wording from the handicap index description. 

[Ty_Webb]

Just now, ThinkingPlus said:

Well, not exactly. The handicap system's purpose is to more or less equalize outcome of match play across all handicaps indices. For example, a 12 can play a 5 in match play and have roughly a 50-50 chance of winning. However, secondarily, the handicap system does provide a reasonable measure of ability.

 

The 0.96 factor was removed under WHS when the number of counting scores dropped from 10 to 8. Some folks indicated that those factors cancelled, but I thought that was a stretch. I also think the ruling bodies removed the "potential" wording from the handicap index description. 

 

Okay, but if they were actually looking for average ability, they'd choose something like scores 4-17 out of your last 20, not 1-8. 1-8 means that you "should" play to your handicap, roughly 4 times out of 20, or 1 in 5. The 0.96 factor I always thought was a "bonus for excellence" - the lower your handicap, the less impacted you were by that. At 0, it has no impact. At 20, it's almost a stroke. 

 

The fact also that better players tend to have less variability in their scores means that when a 5 plays a 12, they'd be expected to win more often than lose. 20% of the time when the 12 plays well, they most likely win. The other 80% of the time when they play worse than their handicap, they most likely lose. And that "chance" shifts further as you move up and down the "how did you play vs normal" scale. The system is still biased in favor of the lower handicap player, but less than it used to be. The old UK system used to be more biased in favor of the better player (especially when they used to use 75% of the difference to determine shots). I'm guessing that's partly why plusgolferuk is upset. 

[PlusGolferUk]

9 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

 

Okay, but if they were actually looking for average ability, they'd choose something like scores 4-17 out of your last 20, not 1-8. 1-8 means that you "should" play to your handicap, roughly 4 times out of 20, or 1 in 5. The 0.96 factor I always thought was a "bonus for excellence" - the lower your handicap, the less impacted you were by that. At 0, it has no impact. At 20, it's almost a stroke. 

 

The fact also that better players tend to have less variability in their scores means that when a 5 plays a 12, they'd be expected to win more often than lose. 20% of the time when the 12 plays well, they most likely win. The other 80% of the time when they play worse than their handicap, they most likely lose. And that "chance" shifts further as you move up and down the "how did you play vs normal" scale. The system is still biased in favor of the lower handicap player, but less than it used to be. The old UK system used to be more biased in favor of the better player (especially when they used to use 75% of the difference to determine shots). I'm guessing that's partly why plusgolferuk is upset. 

Hahah I’m not upset it’s just inferior and doesn’t represent golfers true ability hence ballots over here gone way lower and poor players are now off scratch. We used to try and battle a bad round to save your 0.1 going on at the end. This way every shot counted which is the way golf is. Now if you have a bad few holes you have nothing to play for and I find that to be boring to be honest. My point was the handicaps here have shifted much lower due to the change and our system was most definitely harder. A plus 6/7 handicap was never seen under our system but is common now. I also play at a harder course and the better players have stopped entering matchplay. A plus 4 with slope and all tht goes to plus 7 handicap and an 18 goes up to about 23. So your 22 shots goes up to 30 and you get destroyed. I do understand there is a need for a universal system but ours was better having played both. I’m not even biased. Mostly everything about US golf is better than UK golf but our handicap system was very good and accurate 

[Hawkeye77]

3 hours ago, PlusGolferUk said:

 

Also commenting that your game is similar to a UK player comparing WHS to old UK system is just stupid.

 

You lot don’t have the data we have evidence of using both systems. 2/3/4 handicappers are now scratch handicapper. I was plus 2 on old system I am now plus 5 and play once a month. Its terrible. Your system gets rid of 12 bad scores out your last 20. That doesn’t represent someone’s ability in my opinion. But whatever makes you feel better 😂😂

Lighten up Francis. 
 

WHS didn’t exist when I played in the comp described and yes, same handicaps, similar games, apples to apples and hardly “stupid” to make an accurate observation. 
 

 

[ThinkingPlus]

1 hour ago, PlusGolferUk said:

Hahah I’m not upset it’s just inferior and doesn’t represent golfers true ability hence ballots over here gone way lower and poor players are now off scratch. We used to try and battle a bad round to save your 0.1 going on at the end. This way every shot counted which is the way golf is. Now if you have a bad few holes you have nothing to play for and I find that to be boring to be honest. My point was the handicaps here have shifted much lower due to the change and our system was most definitely harder. A plus 6/7 handicap was never seen under our system but is common now. I also play at a harder course and the better players have stopped entering matchplay. A plus 4 with slope and all tht goes to plus 7 handicap and an 18 goes up to about 23. So your 22 shots goes up to 30 and you get destroyed. I do understand there is a need for a universal system but ours was better having played both. I’m not even biased. Mostly everything about US golf is better than UK golf but our handicap system was very good and accurate 

Being a plus 5 is very impressive. Shooting 8/20 in the mid to high 60s is hard to do.

[PlusGolferUk]

6 hours ago, Hawkeye77 said:

Lighten up Francis. 
 

WHS didn’t exist when I played in the comp described and yes, same handicaps, similar games, apples to apples and hardly “stupid” to make an accurate observation. 
 

 

 

5 hours ago, ThinkingPlus said:

Being a plus 5 is very impressive. Shooting 8/20 in the mid to high 60s is hard to do.

Who’s Francis?

Me and Rory have similar games too. We both hit a high draw. Except he drinks £10,000 bottles of wine. 
 

Thank you, but that’s my point again, I’m not plus 5 on our old system, I’m not consistent enough as I don’t play much. Plus playing at a harder course a 70 is like a 5 under. Another issue I have with whs is that it doesn’t move the playing conditions, if you live in US and have stable conditions this is fine. It we have days here where 74 is a great score as we can have 5/6 club winds. 

[Hawkeye77]

4 hours ago, PlusGolferUk said:

 

Who’s Francis?

 

Take your pick. 
 

 

[ThinkingPlus]

6 hours ago, PlusGolferUk said:

 

Who’s Francis?

Me and Rory have similar games too. We both hit a high draw. Except he drinks £10,000 bottles of wine. 
 

Thank you, but that’s my point again, I’m not plus 5 on our old system, I’m not consistent enough as I don’t play much. Plus playing at a harder course a 70 is like a 5 under. Another issue I have with whs is that it doesn’t move the playing conditions, if you live in US and have stable conditions this is fine. It we have days here where 74 is a great score as we can have 5/6 club winds. 

Well, I think you guys have PCC corrections to account for off nominal playing conditions just as we do. In fact, PCC corrections should be more common for you because of how often you play in difficult conditions and how committed to prompt and accurate score posting you are.

 

BTW, shooting 5 under typically isn't good enough to result in a +5 handicap index unless you are playing a course with very low slope. Because of the slope ratio used in the differential calculation and you playing a difficult course (I presume both a high rating and high slope), you very likely need to be shooting -6 or -7 to get to a +5. Very impressive nearly half the time.

[Ty_Webb]

13 hours ago, PlusGolferUk said:

Hahah I’m not upset it’s just inferior and doesn’t represent golfers true ability hence ballots over here gone way lower and poor players are now off scratch. We used to try and battle a bad round to save your 0.1 going on at the end. This way every shot counted which is the way golf is. Now if you have a bad few holes you have nothing to play for and I find that to be boring to be honest. My point was the handicaps here have shifted much lower due to the change and our system was most definitely harder. A plus 6/7 handicap was never seen under our system but is common now. I also play at a harder course and the better players have stopped entering matchplay. A plus 4 with slope and all tht goes to plus 7 handicap and an 18 goes up to about 23. So your 22 shots goes up to 30 and you get destroyed. I do understand there is a need for a universal system but ours was better having played both. I’m not even biased. Mostly everything about US golf is better than UK golf but our handicap system was very good and accurate 

 

But your +2 has gone to +5 (apparently - like ThinkingPlus said, that's still really hard to get to, especially with slope pushing back on that) and that 18 was probably a 25 on the old system. That and the old system was biased towards better players and now that things are relatively even, better players don't like that and are upset. As I noted, you denied and then spent quite a long paragraph explaining why you're upset.

[PlusGolferUk]

1 hour ago, Ty_Webb said:

 

But your +2 has gone to +5 (apparently - like ThinkingPlus said, that's still really hard to get to, especially with slope pushing back on that) and that 18 was probably a 25 on the old system. That and the old system was biased towards better players and now that things are relatively even, better players don't like that and are upset. As I noted, you denied and then spent quite a long paragraph explaining why you're upset.

Haha as I said, just explain why the handicap system is terrible. Doesn’t upset me. I play the golf course, not 10 handicapper. The rest looks after itself but matchplay for me is pointless.

[tacklingdummy]

On 1/27/2024 at 8:23 AM, DogBoy79 said:

How about the bottom 5 LPGA players from the event?

 

The top 5 celebrity amateurs actually beat Danielle Kang for the week, but I still would not bet against Danielle Kang or any of the LPGA players that finished at the bottom of that tournament in a 18-hole match against any of those celebrity amateurs. 

 

In Gee Chun                     74 - 74 - 73 - 74  Total +7 

Chanettee Wannasaen    73 - 71 - 76 - 76 Total +8 

Pajaree Anannarukarn     72 - 73 - 73 - 78 Total +8 

Danielle Kang                   68 - 79 - 75 - 82 Total +16 

 

 

[tacklingdummy]

On 1/23/2024 at 9:11 AM, ThinkingPlus said:

It was +5 - +7 women's index not men's.  The ams didn't shoot anywhere near their caps over the 3 rounds while the pros, with some exceptions, did. It illustrates the biggest difference between pros and ams; consistency.

 

Yeah, consistency of the pros is much greater. However, theoretically any handicapped amateur will only shoot about 1 out 4 rounds at or better than their handicap. The more consistent scoring an amateur has, the stronger their handicap. For example, if there are two players that have the same exact handicap, but one player's average score is substantially lower, that player with the lower average score has a significant advantage and higher odds of winning in a match. That is why I think that average score adjusted to difficulty of the courses played is a better barometer for handicapping purposes. But that is just me. 

 

 

[ThinkingPlus]

5 minutes ago, tacklingdummy said:

 

Yeah, consistency of the pros is much greater. However, theoretically any handicapped amateur will only shoot about 1 out 4 rounds at or better than their handicap. The more consistent scoring an amateur has, the stronger their handicap. For example, if there are two players that have the same exact handicap, but one player's average score is substantially lower, that player with the lower average score has a significant advantage and higher odds of winning in a match. That is why I think that average score adjusted to difficulty of the courses played is a better barometer for handicapping purposes. But that is just me. 

 

 

I'm sure the RBs assessed various average differentials since it used to be averaging best 10 of 20 rather than best 8 of 20. You could also look at averaging the middle M of N differentials (kind of a median approach). Lots of ways to skin the cat depending on the ultimate purpose of the final number.

[TroyB123]

Having walked around a few state open/state amateur qualifiers with my son, I have to say that at least 60-70% of >+3 handicappers are complete BS, and there is no real correlation between a +1 to +5 on how good they actually are.   The usual suspects that consistently shoot under par and qualify are often in the +1 to +2 range.   I've walked around with so many +3ish players who I can't ever see breaking 75 or even 80 playing from back tees playing tournament rules.   I've seen several guys like this who don't even understand basic rules for lost balls or how to take red stake relief, and others who are about 50% at best at sinking 3 foot putts.   You can tell they probably play their same home course every day, follow rules very loosely and take gimmes on anything under 5 feet, and/or aren't very judicious about entering anything but their best rounds.

 

All the arguing about handicap systems doesn't really matter if the majority aren't even reasonably close to following the rules.

[isaacbm]

On 1/30/2024 at 6:27 AM, driveandputtmachine said:

I played with a few non US players in the 90's on my team and plenty of other players from other countries.  My understanding on the UK system in the 90's was it was based on ALL competition rounds and just a few normal exceptional rounds.  Not sure how that system is so much better

 

In D1 college golf in the 90's roughly 80% of our rounds were competition rounds, either in a NCAA tourney, State or national am event or in a qualifying tourney to determine who was playing the upcoming tournament.   All are against players that could go out and shoot 6 or more under easily.  Playing against other top notch players the nerves were still there for qualifying, not like it was in the State AM match play or in the US AM, but still there.   These US guys as a +6 that were coming over and shooting 82 were the + golfers at their club and obviously were vanity handicaps, not elite Amateurs.  Guys used to pressure from US, state am, or NCAA  events which I played for numerous years isn't going over and shooting in the 80's very often.  Of course they do sometimes as EVERYONE has bad days.  Elite AM bad days are worse than professional bad days

 

A current elite amateur(see the dude that just won on the PGA Tour) is still super inconsistent compared to what I have seen from LPGA players.  Sure on their best day from the same tees that guy destroys an LPGA player, the problem is I have seen plenty of ELITE Am's shoot in the upper 70's.  If it is just one round ANYONE can beat just about anyone in this scenario (ELITE AM vs LPGA) in a one day match.

Sorry, to clarify…

Are you saying in 2023, the guy that won the Western amateur, the north east amateur, the north and south amateur then the US amateur, then played in the Walker cup, then won a PGA tour event at 29 under par is not as consistent as LPGA tour players?   

[farmer]

Isaak, Troy was not talking about players as accomplished as YND.  I also don't doubt what he's seen.  A friend has a grandson who is a pretty decent player and tried to qualify for the US Open.  Friend told me that the kid would have easily qualified if not for the 22 penalty strokes.  So this stuff happens.

[isaacbm]

10 minutes ago, farmer said:

Isaak, Troy was not talking about players as accomplished as YND.  I also don't doubt what he's seen.  A friend has a grandson who is a pretty decent player and tried to qualify for the US Open.  Friend told me that the kid would have easily qualified if not for the 22 penalty strokes.  So this stuff happens.

Totally understand. I was mostly just having a go.
   To me, the word “elite” is thrown around a little too loosely.  The top 10 male amateurs in the world are the elite of the elite. They can literally walk out onto the PGA tour right now and keep their cards. So it’s fair to assume that if you can keep your card on the PGA tour, you are better than average on the LPGA tour. 
 

To be fair, there is a massive difference between the fourth player on the 30th ranked team in Div 1 college golf  than Nick Dunlap. 
 

    But, driveandputtmachine specifically used him as an example, so I called him out. 

[Ty_Webb]

49 minutes ago, farmer said:

Isaak, Troy was not talking about players as accomplished as YND.  I also don't doubt what he's seen.  A friend has a grandson who is a pretty decent player and tried to qualify for the US Open.  Friend told me that the kid would have easily qualified if not for the 22 penalty strokes.  So this stuff happens.

 

I think I'd have won a handful of majors if I could chop 22 off my score every time I played

[aenemated]

18 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

 

I think I'd have won a handful of majors if I could chop 22 off my score every time I played

 

Between me and Tiger Woods; we have 15 majors and 3 central North Carolina high school All Conference championships. 👍🏻

[TiScape]

4 minutes ago, aenemated said:

 

Between me and Tiger Woods; we have 15 majors and 3 central North Carolina high school All Conference championships. 👍🏻