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Hi all. I run a society that only plays main competitions once a year (3 rounds are played over a weekend). Occasionally we have another round later in the year, so 4 rounds in total.
The society has members ranging in handicap (real, not society) from 9 to 28. As we only play so rarely, I am fairly heavy with cutting in order to spread around the prizes over the years, including chopping the winner by a shot on top of other handicap adjustments.
With handicap adjustments I use the standard categories and buffer zones. However, where our society differs is that I calculate the CSS for the day based on the average stableford scores of all golfers after discounting the top 2 and bottom 2 scores. So we typically end up with CSS of somewhere between 27 and 32 points (usually 16 to 18 golfers play) and I do my cuts to that, so if CSS is 30 points and a Cat 2 golfer scores 37 points, I will cut him by 5 x 0.2 as he was 5 points better than his buffer zone.
Now, after about 10 years of doing this, there are several members who have never won (but consistently finish fairly high) who are WAY under their club handicap (which hasn't changed greatly over those 10 years) due to the way that it's very easy to get cut by large amounts simply by being a bit more consistent and just scoring better than the rest of the society. It strikes me that it's probably been wrong to penalise these golfers quite so much as in almost all cases they've been well over par anyway. For example over the 3 rounds, if anyone played to par they'd get 108 points over the 3 rounds and it's more usual for around 100 points to win so it's not like anyone consistently breaks par anyway. It seems to me that with only 2 or 3 category 2 golfers, roughly 8 or 9 category 3 and the rest cat 4 that I am unfairly skewing the CSS towards the lower handicappers.
Can anyone think of a better way of calculating the CSS on the day that is fairer all round? I was toying with the idea of maybe using the golfer who comes 3rd on the day (thereby assuming that 2 golfers had better than average rounds) as a milestone and adjusting HIS score to "36 points" and then adjusting all other scores by the amount I adjusted his by. So if he comes 3rd with 34 points, everyone gets 2 points added to their score and they are then adjusted with respect to 36 points. I'm not sure that this is any better than the other way though, so can any clear thinkers among you please point out where I may make improvements please!?
Also, where someone's club handicap is lower than the society one on the day, this "resets" their society handicap to that club one from that point on. However so far I haven't done the same thing the other way - so if someone in the society has over the years gone to 11.1 and then this year arrives with an official club handicap of 15.4 I haven't allowed them to play off that - even though their "real" handicap wasn't 11.1 a year ago, it was maybe 14.8 for example. Should I be allowing people to "reset" their playing handicaps upwards as well as downwards?
The society has members ranging in handicap (real, not society) from 9 to 28. As we only play so rarely, I am fairly heavy with cutting in order to spread around the prizes over the years, including chopping the winner by a shot on top of other handicap adjustments.
With handicap adjustments I use the standard categories and buffer zones. However, where our society differs is that I calculate the CSS for the day based on the average stableford scores of all golfers after discounting the top 2 and bottom 2 scores. So we typically end up with CSS of somewhere between 27 and 32 points (usually 16 to 18 golfers play) and I do my cuts to that, so if CSS is 30 points and a Cat 2 golfer scores 37 points, I will cut him by 5 x 0.2 as he was 5 points better than his buffer zone.
Now, after about 10 years of doing this, there are several members who have never won (but consistently finish fairly high) who are WAY under their club handicap (which hasn't changed greatly over those 10 years) due to the way that it's very easy to get cut by large amounts simply by being a bit more consistent and just scoring better than the rest of the society. It strikes me that it's probably been wrong to penalise these golfers quite so much as in almost all cases they've been well over par anyway. For example over the 3 rounds, if anyone played to par they'd get 108 points over the 3 rounds and it's more usual for around 100 points to win so it's not like anyone consistently breaks par anyway. It seems to me that with only 2 or 3 category 2 golfers, roughly 8 or 9 category 3 and the rest cat 4 that I am unfairly skewing the CSS towards the lower handicappers.
Can anyone think of a better way of calculating the CSS on the day that is fairer all round? I was toying with the idea of maybe using the golfer who comes 3rd on the day (thereby assuming that 2 golfers had better than average rounds) as a milestone and adjusting HIS score to "36 points" and then adjusting all other scores by the amount I adjusted his by. So if he comes 3rd with 34 points, everyone gets 2 points added to their score and they are then adjusted with respect to 36 points. I'm not sure that this is any better than the other way though, so can any clear thinkers among you please point out where I may make improvements please!?
Also, where someone's club handicap is lower than the society one on the day, this "resets" their society handicap to that club one from that point on. However so far I haven't done the same thing the other way - so if someone in the society has over the years gone to 11.1 and then this year arrives with an official club handicap of 15.4 I haven't allowed them to play off that - even though their "real" handicap wasn't 11.1 a year ago, it was maybe 14.8 for example. Should I be allowing people to "reset" their playing handicaps upwards as well as downwards?
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