Handicaps/sandbagging revisited.....

dunkjez said:

My league is very transparent. The commissioner inputs the scores himself and publishes them all on a website. No other scores apply to the league. We have a league average that we use to even the field. There's no other way to do it, in my opinion. There's no way I'd stay in a league where the guys had even the remote chance to affect the outcome other than their performance in the league.

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My Monday night league does it this way as well but the last two years the guy running the league has been notoriously inconsistent when it comes to updating the handicaps. No real money or prizes at stake so no one makes a huge issue about it but it does affect match results in an almost random manner.

My official handicap is 24 but since I got it I haven't really had a chance to play an official round.

I took up golf to get that handicap and work on getting it down as low as possible, I wouldn't trade lowering that number for $1,000. Lowering your handicap and improving are surely the most important things in golf?


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Otis32 said:

My Monday night league does it this way as well but the last two years the guy running the league has been notoriously inconsistent when it comes to updating the handicaps. No real money or prizes at stake so no one makes a huge issue about it but it does affect match results in an almost random manner.

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I think I'm done with my league because I see it going that way real soon. We play every other week and the commish is starting to take his sweet time updating the site. Sometimes he won't do it until the Friday before the next match...so he takes two weeks to update the results. He hasn't slacked on the scores yet but it's next. One thing I hate is someone in charge of something getting lazy.

Sandbagging is as old as the game itself. Main reason I no longer play in league and I'm pretty much done playing weekend skins games.

There was a time when handicapping was taken pretty seriously by the course's and most hand very active handicap chairman and very strict policy under the "peer review" recommendations. Now days not so much. Any time there is money involved, there will be cheating no matter the amount. Sucks, but such is the state of things today in the world.

dunkjez said:

My league is very transparent. The commissioner inputs the scores himself and publishes them all on a website. No other scores apply to the league. We have a league average that we use to even the field. There's no other way to do it, in my opinion. There's no way I'd stay in a league where the guys had even the remote chance to affect the outcome other than their performance in the league.

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My league is the same with the scores from the league only problem is we only play once a month. Because of this my handicap in the league is wayyyyy higher than my actual handicap. I've tried to give our president my scores and he told me why no one else is. Now a big problem with a lot of this is in the league they were making the men play from around 6500 yards and the seniors around 5700, all competing for the same prizes. What they just did however is take a vote now to let everyone play from the same tee boxes from now on since the seniors were winning everything. By doing this and playing 6020 yards this month (my normal yardage) I won this month with a 60 after handicap. I told guys in my league many times that I cannot play from that far and will usually shoot horrible (high 90's) but given the right distance for me it gives me a chance now in the league. Some guys gave me a hard time but guys that play with me told them that I never try to hide my real handicap and now that everything is fiat it's gonna go down slowly unless he could post his outside scores and they should too and they ALL shut up and said no no we don't wanna do that.

Get the handicap committee to compare their playoff scores to their handicap. As the new factor system is an indication of the best you can play if their scores when it counts are more than a stroke or two below that consistently then they are sandbagging.
I would think the USGA could give you the odds of a guy shooting 3 to 4 below his factor and I bet they are pretty high.

WardF said:

Oh, I like this idea! I wonder if any of the big amateur leagues have a system in place like GC AM tour or Mulligan Tour--both popular in the larger cities.

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The Golf Channel Am Tour uses only the scores shot during their tournaments to determine a handicap index. You are placed in a 4 HI division (0 to 3.9, 4.0 to 7.9 etc.) based on those scores and you compete at gross against all the players in your division.

They will initially place you in a division based on your GHIN handicap index, but after your first tournament your HI will be based only on your tournament rounds.

widespot said:

I probably would IF I liked the people, sandbagging likely exists everywhere. I feel sorry for hackers who have to cheat to win $50 in a club match, especially when they already are probably loaded. I try to enjoy the game and remember that it's my leisure time. it sucks in match play tho.

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Nope. I play money games every Saturday with 12-18 guys and none of them sandbag.