Handicap question

As previously mentioned I play in a small society. Yesterday we played stroke play. Conditions were difficult, very wet. CSS was calculated at 74.
My question is, the guy who finished next to last, net 84, had his handicap cut. Is this acceptable? They use the two over par rule to adjust the score. This guy lost 11 shots on adjustment making net 73.

How was the CSS calculation done?

What is this guy's handicap, and what was his card like? If he plays off a single figure handicap and returned mostly pars with (say) a 15 on one hole, then yes, it's correct.

If he plays off 18 and his card was littered with doubles and triples then, no, he shouldn't be pulled.

I'm either missing something or it might just be me being thick (so apologies if it is me!)...

If he had a net 84 then had his handicap cut (ie reduced) howcome his net for that round became 73? That's a handicap increase of 11 shots for a round that has already been completed to my (admittedly overly simple) mind?

Not 100% sure George but I think the winning score was net 74. Average net score around 78. Hence CSS was put up to 74.
The guy in questions handicap is around the 22-24 area. Quite a few 7,8 and 9's. His first game for a month.

Thanks for posting RC. His gross was about 106-108, after handicap allowance he came down to 84 net. They then looked at his card and rounded his scores down to two over par for each hole. This knocked 11 shots off his gross score, making 73 net, for handicap purposes only.

His score didn't become nett 73. His score is nett 84, but FOR HANDICAP PURPOSES, all scores more than a nett double bogey are reduced to a nett double bogey. So for purposes of calculating his handicap, there were 11 shots that were more than a double bogey, and thus chalked off.

It must have been a strange round though.

George1507 wrote:His score didn't become nett 73. His score is nett 84, but FOR HANDICAP PURPOSES, all scores more than a nett double bogey are reduced to a nett double bogey. So for purposes of calculating his handicap, there were 11 shots that were more than a double bogey, and thus chalked off.

It must have been a strange round though.

Yes - something similar has happened to me. Ran up a 12 (How? Missed the putt for an 11, that's how) in a stroke competition for a nett 77. The 12 was on a par 5 I've no shot on so was reduced to a 7 for handicap meaning an adjusted 72 versus a CSS of 73, so I got cut. I felt it was fair enough as if it had been stableford I'd have had 36 points versus a CSS of 35. In your case (assuming it was a par 72 course) your guy would have had 35pts, but to have an 11 shot adjustment I'd imagine he ran up two or three very big numbers in an otherwise very good (for him) round.

TLDR; Stableford points in a stroke round is equivalent to what your "adjusted score" will look like.

Righto, sorry. Was me (as suggested as a possibility) not getting it!

Sounds like one of my rounds.

Ooh, that's good (* 3 holes) BOOM a 9. Ooh that's OK, BOOM a 10. Repeat until finished...

4 putt - I think in the Club2000 algorithm there is something that stops higher handicap players whose scores regularly have plenty of triple and quad bogeys being reduced because of the nett double correction.

That wasn't the case up until about 2010, which is why there used to be a lot of players (especially older ones) who had vanity handicaps. That's (to some extent) stopped now.

As far as your society is concerned, and I'm assuming that you don't use anything more sophisticated than a spreadsheet to calculate handicaps, then you might want to create a Society Scratch Score, which is the score on the first quartile. So, for example, if there are 16 competitors, the Society Scratch is the score that the player in 4th place manages. So the three ahead of him will be cut. Those behind will get something back. Apply the 'nothing worse than a nett double bogey' to handicaps up to 12, for 12 - 18 handicaps correct only half the double bogey plus scores, and don't correct any of them for 19+ handicaps.

That's the easy way to do what it takes 25 lines of spreadsheet formulas to do in C2000.

George, thanks for that. I wish I'd known that simple system for when I ran a society. Brilliant.

Appreciate the replies.

George, your correct, simple spreadsheet. I like your suggestion.

I think sometimes common sense is not applied to what is meant to be a friendly society.

Incidentally, guess who came last again.

4putt, out of interest, how many people are in your society?
I remember you saying before that there were no clubs in your area, just large societies?

4P - you didn't beat the nett 84 guy? The 'friendly society' thing may be clouding your judgment a little. Were they encouraging you to spend 2½ hours in the bar before you went out to to play? Did they talk you into large spread bets? Lots of trash talking on the first tee?

Wait a minute, doesn't a triple count as a triple if you get a stroke on it for stableford adjustment?

For example, a 20 handicapper gets a stroke on every hole and 2 on two of them.
i.e for stableford adjustment, they're screwed aren't they? Unless someone has had a holocaust on one or two holes and then decent on the rest I can't see how they've been cut for shooting a score as dreadful as a NET 84 off 20 odd.

Not large MPB. Size depends on the time of the year. Only 11 yesterday. During the winter maybe around 25. A lot of people go home during the hot and wet seasons here.
We also find that people prefer to play with their own nationalities, especially those who do not speak English. Then of course there's the clash of personalities resulting in alternative societies being started. About ten years ago there was only one main society with about 60 players registered. Sadly it's splintered to smaller groups.

George, I always get loads of flack. Most of it friendly banter. Better to play badly and smile than not play at all.

4putt wrote:

Better to play badly and smile than not play at all.

Absolutely right. Good luck in your next meeting - hope you win by ten points.

super_realist wrote:Wait a minute, doesn't a triple count as a triple if you get a stroke on it for stableford adjustment?

For example, a 20 handicapper gets a stroke on every hole and 2 on two of them.
i.e for stableford adjustment, they're screwed aren't they? Unless someone has had a holocaust on one or two holes and then decent on the rest I can't see how they've been cut for shooting a score as dreadful as a NET 84 off 20 odd.

Yep - it only happen when the player plays really well for most of the holes but runs up huge numbers on a couple. In this case if the 20 handicapper had a 10, 11 and a 12 (33 total) at par 4s they only get one shot on, this would be adjusted to 7, 7 and 7 (21 total). To be cut though, they'd need to play the other 15 holes to about 6 under handicap (or 11 over gross -11 bogeys and 4 pars or 12 bogeys, 2 pars and a birdie etc etc).

(There are other ways - say 5 x 9 on par 4s, with an 8 somewhere - however in this case, the remaining holes would have to be played to much, much better than handicap).

Nearly every stroke competition at my club (usually about 160 competitors) I see at least one person with a poor nett getting cut, but then the course has a couple of real card wreckers where it's easy to be 5 off the tee (and one of them is the SI 7).

4putt wrote:Not large MPB. Size depends on the time of the year. Only 11 yesterday. During the winter maybe around 25. A lot of people go home during the hot and wet seasons here.
We also find that people prefer to play with their own nationalities, especially those who do not speak English. Then of course there's the clash of personalities resulting in alternative societies being started. About ten years ago there was only one main society with about 60 players registered. Sadly it's splintered to smaller groups.

George, I always get loads of flack. Most of it friendly banter. Better to play badly and smile than not play at all.

Fair enough 4putt. If it was large I was going to say is it worth seeing if they can get registered on howdidido or something like that but probably not worth it for smaller numbers

I've been thinking about not playing for the wet season in Surrey, but then, when would I play!

Totally plausible with 2 or 3 car crash holes.

I shot 85 net 80 and 90 net 85 at Saunton at the weekend and didn't go up. In the morning round on the West I was in with a small chance of a cut, then came an 11 on the par 5 17th - not a stroke hole for me - so for handicap purposes it was rounded down to a 7 so Net 76 and the CSS was 75. Annoyingly I'd birdied it the day before in practice. The 90 round on the east in the afternoon the CSS was 77 R/O.

How did conjure up an 11? Drive blocked into the bundai right off the tee. Found it and had no shot, 2 club lengths wouldn't have got me into a playable lie, going back in a line wouldn't have helped either, so wrists braced, managed to hack it about 5 yards into a relatively better but still awful lie, then managed about 120 yards to the semi on the left side in 3. So from 165 out (downwind) took a 9iron and flushed it into the cabbage behind the green, dropped a provisional down, lie didn't look much like a flyer so 9iron again, this time one bounce on back of green and into the same cabbage, I'll find one of them surely...5 minutes later came the walk of shame back up to 165 yards, wedged it to just off right front apron, chipped on and lipped out a 3 footer. Humbling...first double figure score for a long long time.