Holmdel Golf League Thoughts on Handicaps

As mentioned in several other places on the site, the league's 9-hole handicap computation does not use slope ratings. Slope is used in the USGA/R&A formula to create your handicap index, and is used again to convert a handicap index to a course handicap (which is specific to the course you're playing, the tees you use, and your gender). Our simplified version uses only the course rating to turn your stroke-controlled adjusted score to what is called a differential, these differentials are averaged to get your handicap index, which is then rounded to get your league handicap. (It's actually not that simple, I've ommitted some details, but we have enough to proceed).

This is all fine and good, assuming:

We all play the same course all the time
We all play off the same tees
We're all the same gender

That's a really big oops!

The reason that we have resisted slope ratings and course handicaps isn't so much the additional computation, it's that all of us would have multiple handicaps, depending on where we play and which tees we use. From many years of experience in this league, it seems most golfers can't keep track of a single handicap, so a different one for each of our courses could be a nightmare.

Still, our league software gets it all horribly wrong when we play matches across tee-boxes and genders. Let's for now assume we use actual course ratings for men and women, and the full range of tee-boxes. Our handicaps (the rounded indexes) thus have who we are and where we play baked-in. A reverse computation (the course handicap) is supposed to level the playing field for matches between genders, or from differing sets of tees, but this is not a feature of our software package. As a result, again assuming we have used actual course ratings to create handicap indexes:

Men playing off the blue tees are at a disadvantage playing against men from the white tees or forward tees.
Men playing off the white are at a disadvantage playing against men from the forward tees.
Women playing off any tee rated for women are usually at a disadvantage playing against men from any tee.

Examples? Let's create three golfers, Bill, Bob and Beth, all playing at Hominy Hill, Bill from the blue tees, Bob from the whites, and Beth from the red tees. Bill and Bob are men, Beth is a woman. Should it matter? Only for portability. The course ratings, for the front nine for the three tee-boxes, are 36.6 (blue), 35.2 (white), 36.0 (red). Assume we're looking at three very competent players, each of whose 9-hole rounds used in their handicaps averages 42. Their handicap indexes, in our league. would be 5.4 (Bill), 6.8 (Bob) and 6.0 (Beth). Round these, and we're at 5, 7 and 6. Bill needs to give Bob two strokes, and Beth one. And Beth would need to give Bob a stroke. None of this seems fair, and isn't.

The problem stems from not re-adjusting the handicaps to the course and tees being used. Ideally, the difference between the course ratings from their tees should be redistributed, to re-level the field. Since our software doesn't do that, I have an alternate suggestion.

Enter everybodys scores as if they played the white tees. This meets with a lot of skepticism. To be sure, it is no where near perfect, as it is completey non-portable. What it does do, however, is to normalize what was taken away when we used course ratings to calculate handicap indexes. So as long as players consistenly use the same tees on the same course, it works. And for players playing multiple courses, it's no worse than what we had before (for men playing off the white tees, it's not different at all).

How do we introduce this? I'd say just start doing it, from the point we're currently at. Resetting handicaps (to estimated with no recorded scores) for anyone not using the white tees is very unfair to those players. As the rating differences are generally small, we should see minor adjustments over time. Handicaps for women should trend slightly up, as would those for the few people that might actually play the back tees. Players moving to the forward tees will see handicaps trend slightly down.

New for 2024 - A further drift from GHIN

The USGA/R&A handicap gurus introduced a new 9-hole handicap policy, beginning in 2024, that takes what we do even further away from what they do. In order to have relevance in many 9-hole leagues that proliferate these days, they've found a way to algorithmically generate 18-hole differentials from 9-hole scores. This lets players in 9-hole leagues get established handicaps earlier, and gives the USGA and affiliated associations (NJSGA) an opportunity to sell their product in those leagues. In a perfect world, we'd all have GHIN handicaps, and our software would pull handicaps and post scores. But unless I'm reading the room wrong, I don't think there's significant interest in mandating GHIN handicaps at $40 - $50 per player per year.

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