June 9, 2009

Part 1:

Stonehenge gets a visit from the USGA course rating team

At the request of the handicap committee, the club has requested and has received new course rating team assessments of the Stonehenge Golf Club. It had been a relatively long time since the course had been reviewed and as the USGA recommends periodic reviews. 

Here are the results: 

Stonehenge Men’s Tees                          CR                  Slope

            Blue                                                71.6(nc)          130 (+3)                White                                              70.1(nc)          127 (+1)
            Gold/Red                                        65.6(nc)          108 (+1)

Stonehenge Women’s Tees

            White                                              76.3                135  
            Gold/Red                                        69.1(-0.2)       120 (+3) 

What does this mean?  

In the case of the men’s tees, the data is telling us that the scratch player would continue to play Stonehenge at around even par – and the fact that the slope has increased by a bit (1-2 percent) would indicate that the team realizes that the bogey player would need a bit more help in competing fairly from the men’s tees—especially from the back (blue) tees. 

The women’s tees have been rated for the first time from the white tees – and the woman scratch player would expect to shoot around 5-6 over par from the whites, 2-3 under par from the gold/red tees. Also, the bogey player is now getting about one extra shot in competing from the red tees.

Remember:

A mythical player can be expected to shoot at or under his/her handicap ONLY about 25% of the time!

Slope is a RELATIVE measure of the difficulty of a golf course for the average player versus the scratch player.

Slope is not an absolute measurement of course difficulty – that measurement is the course rating!!

Part 2:

New handicap stroke allocations now completed for Stonehenge

The handicap committee has reassessed the handicap stroke allocations for each of the golf courses for the men from the white tees.  In addition, the ladies tees at Stonehenge were completed.

Over 3000 rounds in total were analyzed statistically per Section 17 of the USGA handicap manual.

The purpose of the redo of the stroke-hole allocations is to better enable us to conduct competitions between a wide range of handicap players – in major events, but just as importantly all of the weekly league and club play!

All sanctioned groups within the Fairfield system are encouraged to adopt the new handicap stroke-holes – and as our scorecard volumes get depleted, all new scorecards will be printed with the new handicap numbers!

It is important to understand that the USGA’s handicap system in section 17 defines the purpose of handicap stroke allocations as follows:

The Handicap Committee should review the course hole by hole, bearing in mind that the basic principle is to equalize the abilities of players at different handicap levels. Men's and women's stroke allocations will usually be different because their need to equalize holes will come on different holes.  A handicap stroke should be an equalizer and should be available on a hole where it most likely will be needed by the higher-handicapped player to obtain a half in singles or four-ball match play.

Difficulty in making par on a hole is not an effective indicator of the need for a stroke.

A complete listing of the old hole handicaps compared to the new stroke handicaps is available at the following link:

www.poetsgolfclub.net/Documents/HOLEHANDICAPSUMMARY.pdf