TGC Handicap Explained

[wbond]

ProTee United I have searched trying to find how the handicap is established and calculated for tournaments and didn't see anything that defines this. If so, can you please provide the link. If not, can you answer the following questions?

1-Can you please explain the handicap process for both situations, going through Q-school and not going through Q-school.
2-Do you use the standard handicap equation?
3-If 20 official rounds have not been completed do you use the following?

5 or 6	lowest 1
7 or 8	lowest 2
9 or 10	lowest 3
11 or 12	lowest 4
13 or 14	lowest 5
15 or 16	lowest 6
17	lowest 7
18	lowest 8
19	lowest 9

4-Can you give us an example showing how this works. I'd be willing to be the guinea pig for this. I don't have my scores from Q-school and not sure how i can find them. But going into my first tournament after q school, I had a handicap of 8.1.
1st tournament-Shell 71/79 so I would assume my HDCP would have went down, but it did not. Going into masters it went up to 8.3
2nd tournament-Masters 76/77/73 once again, i would think it would go down, but it stayed at 8.3
3rd tournament-Heritage 83/84 I would assume it would go up, but it stayed at 8.3
4th tournament-Valero 80/76 I would assume it would stay or slightly drop, it stayed at 8.3
5th tournament-Zurich 71/70 once again, i would think it would go down, but it stayed at 8.3
6th tournament-Wells 79/83 i would think it would go up, but it stayed at 8.3

Now i just shot 67/67/68 at the players so I would think it will go down heading into this weeks Byron Nelson.

So I have 5 rounds from q-school and 16 tournament rounds so it should now be based on my 10 best out of the last 20 correct?

After doing a search of "handicap", this issue seems to come up everytime someone shoots better than their handicap and it ends up going nowhere. Please help clarify the system for all of us.

[BamaGambler]

I too would like to know how the handicap is calculated.

[Ironstrokes]

Same, I like the idea of doing it like they do for real with the 10 best. I do get how that could be tricky though with the big difference in yardages we sometimes play week to week. I know we usually end up averaging around 6600ish, so maybe if we were able to create the handicaps just based on the top 10 rounds on courses of that length it would be a more fair assessment and then we can just leave them be on the real short or long courses without any changes.

[Godfather]

Same, I like the idea of doing it like they do for real with the 10 best. I do get how that could be tricky though with the big difference in yardages we sometimes play week to week. I know we usually end up averaging around 6600ish, so maybe if we were able to create the handicaps just based on the top 10 rounds on courses of that length it would be a more fair assessment and then we can just leave them be on the real short or long courses without any changes.

Each course should have an estimated slope and course rating. Why not do it like the USGA? I think transparency here is paramount.

[FaultyClubs]

Why not make the tour non-handicap and be done with it? I'd much prefer that even if I never won.

Winning isn't that important, most of the fun is in competing and seeing how you stack up and whether you are improving over time. Can do all that without handicaps. Life would be much simpler.

[mthunt]

Why not make the tour non-handicap and be done with it? I'd much prefer that even if I never won.

Winning isn't that important, most of the fun is in competing and seeing how you stack up and whether you are improving over time. Can do all that without handicaps. Life would be much simpler.

There's enough people to have 3 flights as well. Great idea.

[keither5150]

I would vote for gross rounds. My goal would be to crack the top ten. Okay..... so maybe the same 3 people would be in the top 3 all the time. Everyone would have different goals.

[bk1106]

I think ProTee has some plans with "courses will get HCP rated with 10 or more plays". I'd like to see how that will improve the tour HCP. Having said that, I also think manual processes (human judgment) should be retired from tour HCP asap and let a set of clear rules take control. As I said before, "best 10 of past 20" alone will do a lot of good irrespective of slopes and rating. I believe TGC HCP adopts the best 10 rule but not yet the tour HCP. I remain hopeful this will get implemented by next Winter season. Having a robust tour HCP will still raise more tour participants than just a gross score tournament.

[ProTee United]

The game will now get courses HCP rated after 10 plays. This means that you will see many more courses HCP rated and playing these will effect your game handicap.
The idea is that your game handicap is accurate enough to be used as tour handicap as well. Then we will only have to manual adjust when we see high handicaps with very low scores.

Start playing HCP rated courses to work on your handicap.

We will not remove the HC from the tour. However we can make 2 leaderboards. One gross and one net.

For the manual tour HC adjustments just let us know what rating system you want to use and we will implement it.

[keither5150]

That should help. Usually there are at least 10 plays of practice rounds before the tournament starts. This would mean that pretty much every tournament will be on a handicapped rated course from here on.

[Ironstrokes]

The game will now get courses HCP rated after 10 plays. This means that you will see many more courses HCP rated and playing these will effect your game handicap.
The idea is that your game handicap is accurate enough to be used as tour handicap as well. Then we will only have to manual adjust when we see high handicaps with very low scores.

Start playing HCP rated courses to work on your handicap.

We will not remove the HC from the tour. However we can make 2 leaderboards. One gross and one net.

For the manual tour HC adjustments just let us know what rating system you want to use and we will implement it.

I still kind like my idea of using the 10 best rounds out of 20 for courses in the 6600 - 6700ish yard range and leave the longer and shorter ones out of the calculations. Dont think its fair to factor in 67s, 68s, etc on a 6300 yard course when that same person may be shooting in the 80s on a over 7000 yard course. But just my 2 cents

[wbond]

What does anyone think of the following?

1-Only Q-school and tournament rounds count for handicap. This will eliminate the issue of practicing on handicap rated courses, concede hole issues, etc.
2-If you do not go through q-school, your first three tournaments will be 0 hdcp. (Then you can start with 5 best rounds in tournament 4)
3-HDCP adjusts on the following schedule.
Initial handicap based on all 5 rounds of q-school.
After 1st tournament, 1 lowest round from tournament and 4 best rounds of qschool
After 2nd tournament, 2 lowest tournament rounds, 3 lowest q school rounds
After 3rd tournament, 3 lowest tournament rounds, 2 lowest q school rounds
After 4th tournament, 4 lowest tournament rounds, 1 lowest q school round
After 5th tournament, 5 lowest tournament rounds
For tournaments 6-10 add one additional tournament round into hdcp calculation
After 10 tournaments follow best 10 of last 20 tournament rounds.

More than likely new members will have a better chance of winning initially as they become accustomed to the game.

Using at least 5 rounds should be more representative while building up to 20 completed rounds.

I don't know why you would manually adjust rounds. If you have a set of rules that apply to everyone, the hdcp's will self adjust correctly even while playing a mixture of various length courses.

[jrz]

I like this idea, especially since there is no way to not include a practice round played on a handicap rated course from your handicap calculation. There's a good chance that when people play practice rounds they are rewinding shots several times which will ultimately result in a lower score used in the HC calculation than actually should be.

[BamaGambler]

I still kind like my idea of using the 10 best rounds out of 20 for courses in the 6600 - 6700ish yard range and leave the longer and shorter ones out of the calculations. Dont think its fair to factor in 67s, 68s, etc on a 6300 yard course when that same person may be shooting in the 80s on a over 7000 yard course. But just my 2 cents

That is what a course slope and rating are for. An 80 on a really tough course has potential to be a better score than a 70 on a really easy course. It should be the best 10 of your last 20 rounds after adjusted for slope and rating.

[wbond]

+1 That is why I asked the question on whether they were using the standard equation that takes this into account. If not, don't know how you do a handicap. Hopefully we find out.

[Ironstrokes]

That is what a course slope and rating are for. An 80 on a really tough course has potential to be a better score than a 70 on a really easy course. It should be the best 10 of your last 20 rounds after adjusted for slope and rating.

Definitely agree with you here and that would be ideal, just wasn't sure who was doing the handicaps and was trying to make it as easy as possible for that person/group of people

[Mickey]

Don't we all play a ton of real life golf? Assuming I have that right we all must have a real life cap. We could just submit our real life caps to protee until we've played enough tournament rounds (say 10 or 20). Once we've played enough tgc tournament rounds we move to an automated cap based solely on tournament rounds. Just a thought.

[BamaGambler]

I score better on a simulator than IRL. Always having a flat lie makes a 4-5 shot difference for me.


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[ks-man]

6 foot gimmes help too.