Handicap Question ???

Hi

 I was talking to someone about this site and explained I had been outting my card on here recentley and saved is had given me a hanicap figure which Im now using and within reason playing too.

He said that you cant really get a true handicap unless you play off the white tees but we have been going of the yellows as its only a friendly round with friends.

So I guess I have 3 questions

a) is he right ?

b) what does sss mean on the score card as I was under the impression this was used to caculate handicaps and stroke allowances etc ?

c) Would a golf union allow a handicap purely made from the yellow tees 

 Thanks in advance to anyone who can shed some light on these questions

thanks for the reply, thats what I though, hence why on most courses you get a extra shot or two off the whites, I still dont really understand logically why courses dont use the sss as the par for the course ?

I mean if you had a long hard par 4 why not make it a par 5 if you needed to go up a shot or the other way round if you had a short par 5 make it a par 4 and give it a low stroke index.

This leads me onto another question I guess, how are stoke indexs worked out ? The course I play regularly I get 2 shots on what I feel and play as some of the easier holes, but on the harder long tighther par 4's that always seem to be into the wind i receive a single stroke, I know you have to have 1 to 9 and 19 to 18 mixed equally between the front anf back 9 but surely some kind of logic should apply ?

You will find, Robert that there is no logic in the way clubs allocate the SI to their holes. Always a bone of contention.

Personally I don't believe in SSS at all, par is what we play to and there is no need for all this silly tinkerng. The Pros do not have to put up with it, so why should we. 

The rubbish that CONGU put out to justify their interpretation regarding allowances is another  travesty. 

To get and maintain a scratch handicap, J P, it is controlled by county and your cards have to include playing away from your home course and in open competitions. So even if you played a so called mickey mouse course I doubt you would be scratch.

Now we can discuss this from a different angle. If for arguments sake we had 18 par fives of around the five hundred yard mark, the par would be 90 but the SSS, due to its length would be substantially higher, yet I would back myself to be scratch playing this hypothetical course. 

On the other hand we have a course of 18 par fours like the 5th at Wildwood G.C with a length of about 300 yds and I would bet anything you like that you would not make 18 pars, because of the design of the hole. Yet the SSS would probably be in the low sixties.

The SSS score attempts to differentiate between courses to try and make it a level playing field but did we get our handicaps altered because of the high SSS at Belton Woods for example, of course we didn't. so in effect it is a waste of space.

J P, you are completely missing the point of my argument, because if the man at the municipal off 10 plays the man at Carnoustie off 10 then there is nothing in the regulations to alter the handicaps to make it a fair match. This makes a mockery of the handicap system which the SSS does nothing to alleviate.

The scores at the Golfshake open would rather suggest that the SSS is not in keeping with the difficulty, after all golf is meant to played by people of all standards and some courses do not cater for all standards, Belton woods is one of them, with a lot of holes with water immediately in front of the green.

I long gave up on calling anyone on here a bandit as it only got me into trouble, so please do not bring this up again, J P. or when we play I will admonish you.

Up early Mr Santorini.

J P, you are really testing me now, the SSS does not cater for your scenario where they are equally matched. If the 10 handicapper at the municipal course plays the 10 handicapper of Carnoustie at Carnoustie then he will lose heavily because there is no provision to increase his handicap because he is playing a much harder course.

Of course all courses are different, some are much easier than others, but the SSS does not take this into account. I'm sorry, it doesn't. 

I have just played in amatch today against one of the other Crown golf clubs - Blue Mountain. Our course is much tougher than theirs and we won easily because they arrived with their  sixteeen handicaps and were not good enough to play to it. Nowhere in the SSS provisions can we give them the extra shots they would have needed to make it a fair contest.

We will have the same problem next week when we play Donnington Grove as a fifteeen handicapper there would be an 10/11 at my place. So we will be on a hiding to nothing. In fact they thrashed us at our own course earlier in the year because of this fact. 

You might be able to drive onto short par fours, but the majority of us cannot, so if it takes two shots to reach the green then the par is a four. not a three and half.

At my course half of the holes I cannot reach in regulation figures so how would you assess the SSS to allow for this.

The USA slope system is different in that when one does play away then ones handicap is altered by quite a complex formula, this is supposed to make everyone equal, but in actual fact it doesn't. 

Then I invite you to tell me why Carnoustie is SSS 75 even though it's par 72? And also why a local muni I know is SSS 67 even though it too is par is 72?

It used to be solely on the total length of a course but they now have introduced degrees of difficulty. 

Because of SSS - the Carnoustie player has to shoot 12 over par or less to get cut.

Anyone who has the fortune to have a SSS higher than the par, and three over par can be considered very rare to have got his handicap he is lucky that he only has to shoot 13 over par to play to it.

The ten hadicapper at the municipal course, unfortunately  because of the low SSS has to shoot five over par to play to 10.

This does not level things up because, as I keep on saying there is no provision in the SSS to differentiate between the two couyrses when the muni guy has to play the tresting Carnoustie. He will still be 10 handicap and will be on a hiding to nothing.

The majority of courses vary by only 1 stroke from par to SSS. 

CONGU is a pain in the backside. 

Whatever measure you use to determine handicaps sss or par, it is always going to be hit and miss if the handicap is based on a few marked cards and a limited number of competitions. 

I think handicaps should have some sort of rating system attached to them to show how well tested they are.  Perhaps a star system where you earn stars for say 10 competitions, two years continuous monitoring and the handicap being within 2 shots of your best ever handicap. You could then divide competitions into divisions for zero, one, two and three star players or you could have one big competition but give different handicap percentages to the different star categories ie three star players play off full handicap down to zero players who play off three quarter handicaps.

The club where I am a member already does a rudimentary form of this by only allowing members to enter the bigger competitions if they have competed in and completed 6 qualifying events in the previous year.

My sentiments exactly, J P. No glory in winning receiving shots.