If the SAGA is so “intent
on aligning our handicaps” with those of overseas countries, why do we not
handicap only on individual competition scores?
SA golfers continue to
play more betterball and alliance competitions than most other golfing nations
so how can we possibly have the same or similar handicap situation. One only
has to look at the low scores shot by the high handicappers (see the Castle
Lite competition on the handicap network) to see that the system is horribly
skewed. Their average low scores are around 10 and 11 under par, whereas the 0
- 5 group average low scores are about 6 under par.
Sadly it would appear
that SAGA cares as much about the interests of SA golfers as Eskom seems to
care about its clients. I challenge the SAGA to repeat their survey to get
satisfaction levels about this new 3 over debacle. I am willing to take a
sizeable wager that it will be far from their 73%!
Rodney
The SAGA replies…Until there is a global handicap standard then one can only try and
align with countries that play similar golf and which have a large enough
number of players to be globally significant. The USGA currently has a similar
playing profile to us in South Africa, and also has the largest number of
players, so for better or worse we are now aligned very closely to them.
Having said this there are however two
distinct handicapping camps – those that use all scores for handicapping
(The USGA, New Zealand and South Africa) , and those that only use scores
from competitions for handicapping (England, Ireland ,Europe and Australia).
There are very sound arguments for both camps, but ultimately the majority of
golf played in England, Ireland and Europe is individual competitions, while in
South Africa, we predominantly play better ball and social golf.
There are two major reasons for the recent
changes to the number of 2 and 3 overs allowed per round.
1. Firstly,
golf is increasingly a global sport and people from all over the world compete
with one another, either as visitors to this country, or as local golfers
travelling abroad. So the SAGA correctly felt that our handicap system and
handicaps should be broadly in line with those of the other major Golf playing
countries.
2. Secondly
the handicap system should be fair to all handicap groups so that no matter
what your handicap you should play to or close to your handicap the same
percentage of the time as any other handicap.
The South African
system was unfortunately not in line with the handicap calculations of the
major golf playing countries. The international standard for players playing to
or below their handicaps is around 30 percent. Under our "old"
system, handicaps below 9 and above 24 were only playing to their handicaps
about 10 percent of the time, while handicaps between 9 and 24 were playing to
or below their handicaps at the international average of 30 percent. The low
and high handicappers were therefore under handicapped and at a disadvantage.
The reason for this
was due to our unique system of only allowing a 2 over or 3 over if you had a
stroke or two strokes, as well as our excessive penalties. The revised maximum
score per hole of 2 over and 3 over is still lower than the USGA, which is
shown below.
The rest of the world
have adopted a net double bogey as a maximum score on any hole. This means if
you have a shot you can enter a 3 over and if you have 2 shots you can enter a
4 over. The SAGA felt this was a step too far from where we were, so we adopted
a slightly reduced maximum score.
We are expecting the
22 plus handicaps to go out which would assist in getting them to score to or below
their handicaps to the same percentage as the 7 to 18 handicaps.
We will of course
monitor the percentages as they change over the next few months and also
investigate the hole by hole scores entered for the 19 to 24 sector, to monitor
if this is an issue or not, but as you can see from the USGA system this has
not been an issue with their scores. They don’t see this plateau effect as each
group gets an additional shot to their maximum allowed.
In response to your
comment on the low scores shot by the high handicaps, we monitor the percentage
of rounds played to or below handicap by the various handicap groups on a
monthly basis. At present 19 -24 handicaps are playing to their handicaps only
19.5% of the time and 25 – 36 handicaps only 11.75% of the time. This is well
below the international standard of 30%.
I hope that this has answered your
questions and alleviated some of your concerns.
Kind regards
Justin King | General Manager | Handicaps
Network Africa (Pty) Ltd