Handicap expectations?

First topic message reminder :

When you go out for a game, how close to your handicap do you expect to play? It seems that a lot of golfers expect to play to their handicap every time they go out, if they don't then it's a bad round.
My belief is that your handicap should reflect your ability when you are playing well. I believe that I should play under my handicap perhaps 2 rounds in 10, play to my handicap maybe 3 times in 10 and the other 5 times play over it.

D4S:
I've come down from 20 to 17 this year. Ergo must have shot below twice. I would take, right now, shooting below my handicap twice more out of the rounds (stableford & medal) I have remaining this year. I do agree with what S_R says. I'm afraid I don't buy all this 'it's not how it's how many' b0ll0x. If I'm not getting my drives away reasonably well, if I'm topping, shanking or heeling my fairway shots, if I'm chilly-dipping my chips and not getting my putts up to the hole then I'm not a happy camper (inwardly - outwardly I don't curse, swear, spit and slam clubs, but inwardly I am

On another note, application for North Weald has been completed and will be posted out tomorrow

always find that when i worry about my score against handicap that this puts too much pressure on me and i then shoot well over my handicap, my best rounds seem to be when i am enjoying the banter with my friends, could not tell you how often i have stood on the 18th tee, good score going and finishing strongly without once having thought of my score, way forward for me 606ers

I am told that the expectation for cat 2 is to play to handicap about 25% of the time, more frequent for cat 1 and less so for 3 and 4. This explains the different levels of reduction for each category, and the principle that the better you are the more consistently you should score. Of course that may be wrong - but it seems logical to me.

super_realist wrote:Ray, your handicap is relative to the CSS of the day, not the par of the course, it shouldn't matter whether CSS is above or below par as to how frequently you play to your handicap.

super - what i meant is that CSS is always above par, whereas personally i look at my score above par (i'm one of those gross not nett people).

JDandfries wrote:Ray

I cant understand why you don't 'know' your score, you should always know where you stand to par, or to your handicap!!

If not, how else can you expect to play to your handicap, and how else, when you dont play to it, can you know where you went wrong?

It's easy, when I move on to the next hole, I stop thinking about the previous one and i don't keep a mental note of how many over par i am (the way I'm playing right now I would need a calculator!). I'm trying to play golf for the enjoyment of each shot, I don't play with one eye on the leaderboard and I am not worried about making the cut on Friday. Of course I have a different approach to match play.

After my round I can easily recall every shot and I'll have a think about where I went wrong, I just don't try to do that mid round.

super_realist wrote:Obviously from a handicap reductionor a competition situation then the lower score is preferable. I'm just saying that shooting a low score doesn't mean you played better than a higher score, and going out with the expectation of a score isn't the best way to achieve it.

If you go out and just try and play well, then hopefully the score will take care of itself and if you've played well but just not scored well there is no point in worrying about it, likewise if you've played poorly but scored well, lap it up but try and improve how you played next time.

Completely agree 100%. Now I'm going to go back to disagreeing with you on the Olympics thread!

Coming to the party late on this thread as I've been away for a weeks rest and recuperation with Mrs Mav, to D4S OP, I'd have to agree with SR's first post that going out expecting a specific score is detrimental as people get hooked up on thoughts like oh my god I'm 2over my handicap already and then concentrate on having to recover rather than living in the moment and taking one shot at a time..

I go onto the course with only one thought about scoring in mind and that's to do the best I can on that day. No amount of worrying about a score or a handicap can be positive on help to relax and score well. Its no coincidence most golfers best scores are when they aren't worrying about the actual scoring.

My only handicap expectations are for post season where I have a target handicap I want to achieve sadly this year it won't budge due to being out of action, but the scores to get me there day by day don't matter just the end of season result

The following article is taken from the official USGA webite and talks about handicapping. There's some very interesting stuff regarding playings who miraculously smash their handicaps on tournament days...

Does it seem to you that you play a few strokes over your Course Handicap most of the time? Well, that's normal under the USGA Handicap System.

Why? The USGA Handicap System is based upon the potential ability of a player rather than the average of all his scores. The USGA's Handicap Research Team tells us that the average player is expected to play to his Course Handicap or better only about 25 percent of the time, average three strokes higher than his Course Handicap, and have a best score in 20, which is only two strokes better than his Course Handicap.

A few words and a little arithmetic may explain. A player's Handicap Index reflects his potential because it is based upon his best scores posted for a given number of rounds, ideally the best 10 of his last 20 rounds. Since the USGA has his worst 10 scores tossed out, his Handicap Index reflects his best days.

The arithmetic comes in when the golf club calculates a player's Differential for each score he posts. The Differential is the difference between a player's adjusted gross score and the USGA Course Rating of the course on which the score was made, multiplied by 113, and then the total is divided by the USGA Slope Rating from the tees played rounded off to one decimal place.

For example, if you post an 80 on a course with a Course Rating of 68.7 and a Slope Rating of 105, your Handicap Differential is 12.2. The next step entails averaging your best Handicap Differentials, which your golf club or association then will multiply by a 96-percent "bonus for excellence" factor that slightly favors the lower-handicap player. The next step is to delete all numbers after the first decimal digit, with no rounding off to the nearest tenth. Your club Handicap Committee then reviews your record, modifies it, if necessary and then issues your USGA Handicap Index.

If you have a USGA Handicap Index of 11.6, for instance, it translates into a Course Handicap of 14 when you play from the middle tees one day at a course with a Course Rating of 72.1, with a Slope Rating of 135. So a little addition (72.1 + 14) leads you to think that you will consistently shoot around 86. In reality, your score average is normally three more strokes than that, or an 89. The USGA Handicap Research Team has determined that your best score in 20 is normally only two strokes better than your Course Handicap, or an 84; the probability of your recording an 83 twice in 20 rounds is only one in 50.

A good way to think of the range of scores upon which your USGA Handicap Index is based is the old bell curve that school teachers refer to when discussing the range of scores on an exam. The scores of most players, when plotted out, are distributed on a bell curve from the high to low end of the scale. Thus, when you drop out the worst half of your scores, the average of the remaining 10 scores on the upper part of the bell curve reflect your potential ability.

Now, once in a while you will hear about someone shooting an incredible tournament score, such as a net score of 59. What are the odds of shooting a score like that? These tables from the USGA's Handicap Research Team have figured the odds of one exceptional tournament score up to ten strokes better than the Course Handicap.

For example, the odds of our example player with a Course Handicap of 14 beating it by eight strokes (-8 net) once is 1,138 to one. Put another way, the average player posts 21 scores a year. That means that to score this well, assuming the Handicap Index is correct, would take 54 years of golf to do it once. The odds of a player beating his Course Handicap by eight strokes twice is only 14,912 to one. That's 710 years of golf for the average player -- odds far beyond the realm of reasonableness.

Since the USGA Handicap System is designed to promote fairness during competitions, what happens if a player's scores contradict the odds and he consistently plays better than his Handicap Index when some crystal or trophies are at stake? The USGA has created a Formula - we'll spare you all the complicated arithmetic - that is outlined in the USGA Handicap System manual under Section 10-3, "Reduction of a USGA Handicap Index Based on Exceptional Tournament Scores." A player's USGA Handicap Index will be automatically reduced when he records at least two tournament scores in a calendar year or in his latest 20 rounds that are a minimum of three strokes better than his USGA Handicap Index. The better the scores, the greater the reduction.

The end result is you've got your USGA Handicap Index for better or for worse. Don't worry if you never seem to play to it on a given day. All golfers are in the same boat because USGA Handicap Indexes are based on a player's potential ability rather than the average of his scores. You can do your part to make the USGA Handicap System work best by making sure all "great" tournament scores by all players get posted with a "T" so that they are reviewed and used under Section 10-3

Just shot an 86 & an 81 off 7 (15 over and 10 over) in the club champs yet by all accounts I wont be ticking up .1 & .1 (which I though I would be at the turn in both rounds). Apparently the net 74 was good enough for the buffer zone in the afternoon but the morning round...get this....deemed a non qualifier because of the cups!! Greenkeeping staff used new cups but apparently there needs to be an inch of soil between the green surface and the top of the plastic...in the morning there wasnt. It was corrected over lunchtime.


Also had a shocker of a penalty in the morning, club cleaning cloth sat on top of my bag, blew off the bag and onto the ball on the fairway...aaarrrggghhh!!! I'm leaking enough shots without giving them away!!