The GHIN Soft Cap
The glitch in the matrix is that it's really easy to drop your handicap by 2-3 strokes if you get hot and put 2 or 3 really good rounds together. Then when your play returns to your "normal" form, your cap starts climbing again. Not quickly, but it happens eventually, and then you're stuck with that low handicap to calculate your soft/hard caps from for the next 12 months.
Really good rounds affect your handicap immediately, because they immediately go into your top 8 scores, where your handicap is calculated from. Really bad rounds don't, since they won't be in the top 8 of your last 20. It takes some time (and some chronically worse than usual play) for those scores to creep into your top 8 and start raising the handicap. How long it takes depends a lot on how often you play - I play 20 rounds in 6-7 weeks, so by mid-April all my current scores will be wiped off my last 20 rounds; for somebody who posts 10-15 rounds a year, it will take a lot longer.
I would love to try that one day. haha
I actually don't hate this idea. Guys who are gaming the system for a competitive advantage aren't going to be as inclined to tank competitive rounds, and for the rest of us, the "pseudo handicap" still allows us to track our progress just like we do now.
A competitive round is one where your score card must be attested and turned in. And yes, many people would have only one or two a year. Many would have zero. In my dream-world, users could not post competitive rounds - only tournament officials could enter those.
But that handicap would be used only for more competitive rounds. I guess the math would have to change to not require 20 scores since so many would have so few competitive rounds, but the math wizards could figure that out.
Your pseudo-handicap on the other hand would contain your competitive rounds plus any other rounds you wanted to post. That's the one you could use for tracking your month-to-month progress.
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- #181
Alright, I'm in.
My last two member/member tournaments I played recklessly when my partner was in play. I'll be glad to be a 10 for the tournament this year.
I got softcapped some time ago. This time last year I was a 6.8, then very quickly got up to 9.6, then back to 8.2, and now I'm at 10.1. I'm hitting the ball worse, but my short game is improved over last year.
That'd definitely be a "gotcha." Obviously you could also have someone enter some tournaments they simply don't care about, post huge numbers and then turn it on for the one tournament they do care about. Not sure how you can ever design a system which could prevent that. Given that money is usually required to enter tournaments, I do think it less likely than sandbagging casual rounds.
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- #184
It just made me laugh a bit because my partner and I generally play pretty reckless day one which is best ball, and then day two is alt-shot so no scores count.
Our handicaps would be awful.
There's no way it could be 20 rounds, unless you're in the club men's league or something. I just think for the casual golfer the rounds that would count would be too far between for it to be relevant.
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- #188
not that I expect you to stay soft capped, but I do find it kind of funny that you could potentially post over 200 rounds and maintain the status.I find it pretty hilarious to be honest. Lord knows I wish I wasn’t ******** the bed on rounds and was playing like I was at summers end
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- #189
It’s still at the “oh that’s funny” stage for me. From 3 in October to 6 now, all rounds where one or two holes just ruin me haha
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- #191
I find your challenges entirely relatable.
This was not on my 2024 Bingo card.
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- #193
That’s why I posted it, I knew you’d sympathize haha
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- #194
New course that I still don’t know how to play and losing my swing means, lots of 80-81 rounds
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- #195
I got soft capped a couple of years ago. It made it impossible to compete in net events. I may be there again this year because I went on a golf road trip back in October and got really hot, posting three great scores on difficult courses and I have not played like that since.
The entire handicapping thing is much easier to apply in theory than in practice. Take my situation as an example. I play at 4200 feet elevation. Hence, I hit the ball further, relative to my club speed than the majority of golfers playing at lower elevations. Then, I go play in some golf event at sea level. Nobody can tell me that somebody going from driving the ball 275 or 280 yards to 255 yards is going to shoot the same scores, everything else being equal. Thus, for golf away from my home area, I am saddled with an artificially low index. I have no idea how to measure the difference, but I think it is real.
I don’t know how many other competitive sports use handicaps and gross/net scoring, but I doubt that there are very many.
The entire handicapping thing is much easier to apply in theory than in practice. Take my situation as an example. I play at 4200 feet elevation. Hence, I hit the ball further, relative to my club speed than the majority of golfers playing at lower elevations. Then, I go play in some golf event at sea level. Nobody can tell me that somebody going from driving the ball 275 or 280 yards to 255 yards is going to shoot the same scores, everything else being equal. Thus, for golf away from my home area, I am saddled with an artificially low index. I have no idea how to measure the difference, but I think it is real.
I don’t know how many other competitive sports use handicaps and gross/net scoring, but I doubt that there are very many.
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This makes a bit sense (at least i think it does). I wonder if at some point in time the handicap nerds that run GHIN (and i mean that in the most endearing possible way) and other handicapping systems will find a way to compensate handicaps for golfers who normally play at altitude, when the play courses at sea level, and vise-versa. I mean, they have an adjustment for weather... right?
PS- anyone ever try hitting drives in Death Valley? y'know... just to set some sort of baseline
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Amateur tennis rates players and assign levels (NTRP). I competitions players of similar ratings play each other. I think most bowling leagues use a sort of handicap based on average score. You are correct that team sports don’t use any real system in an attempt to level the playing field.