Let's actually spend Part 2 going over the components of the handicap system. I've posted a lot of this information many, many times before... but it's important that we all know how it works.
On a scorecard, you'll find a
Course Rating and a
Slope for each set of tees. The Course Rating is a number around par (70.2 for example), whereas the Slope is a number between 55 and 155... usually around 125 for the tees we play.
Before I explain what those mean, we need to define two different types of golfers. According to the USGA:
Scratch Golfer - "
Someone who can play to a Course Handicap™ of zero on any and all rated golf
courses.
He (she)
can hit tee shots an average of 250 (210) yards and reach a 470
(400)-yard
hole in
two shots."
Bogey Golfer - "
Someone with a Course Handicap of 20 (24). He (she) can hit tee shots an
average
of 200
(150) yards and can reach a 370 (280)-yard hole in two shots."
By those definitions, about half of our league is not even at "Bogey Golfer" status because your course handicaps are too high. Anyway, let's use those to help define Course Rating and Slope.
Course Rating - Basically what a Scratch Golfer should shoot from any given set of tees. Let's use the Saddlebrook scorecard for example. We played the whites which has a Course Rating of 69.5. You'd expect a Scratch Golfer to shoot 70 from those tees. Whereas the Blues are 72.5... so a Scratch Golfer should shoot around a 73
(a 3 stroke difference... which is important later).
Slope - How difficult the course is for the Bogey Golfer, in relation to the Scratch Golfer. The higher the number, the harder the course, with the average being 113. If you remember geometry, you'll recall the slope is the rise vs. run of a line. No different here. They take the Course Rating above, and compared it to the Bogey Rating (which is never listed on the card) and figure out the slope of that resulting line.
That's right, there's also a thing called
Bogey Rating which is used "behind the scenes" in these calculations. It's exactly like a Course Rating, but with Bogey golfers in mind instead of Scratch Golfers. From the Saddlebrook white tees, the Bogey Rating is 94.1 for men. How many of us shot 94 or better? FIVE out of FOURTEEN! That's terrible. We're terrible.
But I digress...
When you want to know your course handicap, you take the slope of the tees you're playing, divide that by 113 (average slope) and multiply that by your index. For example, I was an 11.0 index at Saddlebrook from the white tees with a 133 slope.
133 / 113 * 11 = 12.9 rounded to
13.
Works great. Everyone is happy.
Until someone plays another set of tees. You see... the USGA points out that playing from a different set of tees is basically playing a
completely different course. And that course has a
completely different expectation of what a Scratch and Bogey golfer should shoot. So when Dan moved back, we correctly calculated his course handicap... but we didn't take into account the overall change in expectation (also referred to as target score).
If two scratch golfers play each other from different tees, their course handicap is always going to be 0 because their index is 0. But clearly the one further back is at a huge disadvantage. So how do you account for it? You use the difference of the Course Ratings, which is the target score for a scratch golfer.
Remember that 3 stroke difference from Blues to Whites at Saddlebrook (mentioned above)? That's what we would add to anyone moving back. Or you subtract it from the person on the forward tees. It doesn't matter, just pick wherever MOST people are playing as the baseline. Dave isn't the best example, but if he played the tips at Saddlebrook his handicap that day would go from a 7 to a 10. He'd probably still buy a pitcher though.
And yes, when Gorecki whined about being so terrible he needed to move UP a set of tees... we should have been lowering his handicap by the difference in the Course Ratings. This post is already too long, so
Part 3 will contain the audit findings. But do at least attempt to comprehend how this all works. I'm guessing some of our longer hitters will eventually volunteer to move back to gain some strokes and use more drivers off the tee.
