What are the effects of distance on players of different length?

[Jay Kirkpatrick]

I will say that, as I watched the Womens Open sporadically yesterday, I did think that there are many a good amateur in my state (NC) that could have won that thing.  Once again, that may be my malecentric bias coming out in full bloom, but I have a hard time thinking that some of the young college kids from decent programs couldn't dominate on a 6400 yard course.  It would have turned into pitch and putt for many of them, and with the grooves nowadays, rough only presents a minor disadvantage (see spin-induced fiasco at Bethpage).

[Jason Walker]

You're probably closer there...the top end of the elite amateur male golfers who play competitively could have held their own, no question.  But we're not talking about those guys.   Here's something--go look at any regional golf association's mid-am tournament qualifiers.  See how many 0.4's and 1.1's and 2.3's shoot mid-high 80's in a tournament format on a course not playing from the back tees and certainly not set up with any exceptional difficulty.

[Jay Kirkpatrick]

Throw him on a 6700 yard golf course and he's almost always around even par or better... he just never plays courses from there so his handicap stays up.

Remind me to never bet with said friend.   I actually have no issues with the handicap system for those that strictly adhere to it.  Seems to work well with all of the people I golf with.  All I can say is you're telling me your just under 4 index friend breaks par on a 6700 yard course of any difficulty....well, like I said, just remind me not to bet.

I actually did some digging and I started 2008 as a 7 index so my 83 ESC Avg is misleading---slightly.  Maybe it was 81 the second half of the year.

Funny thing is that he's the most honest golfer I've every played with... he putts everything out and counts every penalty stroke no matter the game.  He hits it a long way and is somewhat sporadic with the driver.  When he gets on a sub 6700 yard golf course, he just takes three wood or hybrid and doesnt' worry about hitting it out of play -- something he can't do on most of the golf courses he plays.

[George Pazin]

I will say that, as I watched the Womens Open sporadically yesterday, I did think that there are many a good amateur in my state (NC) that could have won that thing.

How many of those guys are 4s?

[Jay Kirkpatrick]

You're probably closer there...the top end of the elite amateur male golfers who play competitively could have held their own, no question.  But we're not talking about those guys.   Here's something--go look at any regional golf association's mid-am tournament qualifiers.  See how many 0.4's and 1.1's and 2.3's shoot mid-high 80's in a tournament format on a course not playing from the back tees and certainly not set up with any exceptional difficulty.

I here you there.  I've played many a qualifier with a 1 handicap that couldn't break an egg.  Then again, I've played with guys that actually play much better in tournament conditions.  It just gets back to my theory that al 4 handicaps aren't created equally, and that tournament golf is a 'crazy' thing.  A couple weeks back, I made 3 doubles in a qualifier... something I haven't even come close to doing in any recreational round in probably a year.

[Brent Hutto]

The "young college kids from decent programs" that I've met were plus-handicaps when they graduated High School. Past that point the handicap index doesn't mean much.

The USGA Handicap System, whatever its flaws, does a decent job making it possible for golfers with indexes from Scratch or so up into the 20's have somewhat enjoyable matches. It was not designed to accurately rate players who play in handicapped competition with those who regularly compete in straight-up tournaments over 72 holes of stroke play. If it did, there would not be the idea of using the best half of the scores and the numerical difference between me and some Top 100 college golfer wouldn't be 25 strokes it would be more like 35.

That's why these hypothetical "Pro against a so-and-so handicapper" questions are ill-formed IMO. There's a set of abilities needed to play and count all your bad shots, day in and day out, and seldom be totally out of it. Most 4 (or 2, or 1) handicappers have never been tested in terms of those abilities and a numerical USGA index certainly does not capture that potential.

[Jay Kirkpatrick]

I will say that, as I watched the Womens Open sporadically yesterday, I did think that there are many a good amateur in my state (NC) that could have won that thing.

How many of those guys are 4s?

None.  Don't confuse my arguments here... I've already probably pissed enough people off.

I think many elite male amateurs could make a good living on the LPGA.  Heck... Mike Goodes, a formerly elite NC amateur, is making a great living on the Champions Tour.  He had great success in the Carolinas Amateur ranks for many years, but never really seriously contended at a national level to my (limited) knowledge.

I think a "high quality" 4 handicap could, on occasion, hang with a lower-tier short-hitting female pro on a long, hard golf course.

Theres a big difference in the two.

[Kalen Braley]

Any way you slice it....Womens professional Basketball and Golf are in the same league...

Put a very good male High School Team/Player up against them and it would be good competition.

[Jason Walker]

Kalen-
I actually don't disagree with you.  But in this context, Jay is confusing a 4 handicap index with someone who could--even on rare occasion--compete with an LPGA golfer.  There is absolutely no way.   I think even less so for the "high-quality" 4, whatever that means.  The more scores that 4 index has posted, the further away he gets from the LPGA pro.  And to tie all of this back to the original question in the thread--distance--IMO, it has nothing to do with enormous gap in golfing skill between these two sets of golfers.

[John_Conley]

Jay, you seem to be comparing your friend to female touring pros, but are saying "a 4 hcp".

If your friend played Division I golf anytime recently he is nowhere close to a 4.  Shoot 79 every now and then on a 7,000+ yard course and you probably have an index of 4.something and a course handicap of 6.  A four handicap on a course where the rating is 72.0 (which is probably 6,500 yards in Florida) will shoot 76 or better just one in five rounds.  (Do it more often than that and he's not a 4.)

Also, your hypothetical player probably becomes a 0 or 1 handicap if he plays golf all summer daily.  The truth is that a 4 hcp just isn't very good when you are talking about playing high-level amateur golf.

My scale:

Tiger Woods - +10
Top 10 Tour pro - +8
Normal Tour pro - +6-7
Top college player - +4-5
Normal D1 college player +2-3
Competitive amateur golfer at state level +1-2
Competitive club player (may win club champ)0 or +1
Solid mid-am golfer (not going to win state event) 2-3
Good golfer 4-5

There are so many rungs between the 4 and an LPGA tour player that it isn't even close.  An LPGA Tour player is probably a +3 hcp on the men's scale.

All that said, handicaps doin't matter in competitive golf for the reason I gave above.  You COUNT your bad rounds in competition.

[Jay Kirkpatrick]

The "young college kids from decent programs" that I've met were plus-handicaps when they graduated High School. Past that point the handicap index doesn't mean much.

The USGA Handicap System, whatever its flaws, does a decent job making it possible for golfers with indexes from Scratch or so up into the 20's have somewhat enjoyable matches. It was not designed to accurately rate players who play in handicapped competition with those who regularly compete in straight-up tournaments over 72 holes of stroke play. If it did, there would not be the idea of using the best half of the scores and the numerical difference between me and some Top 100 college golfer wouldn't be 25 strokes it would be more like 35.

That's why these hypothetical "Pro against a so-and-so handicapper" questions are ill-formed IMO. There's a set of abilities needed to play and count all your bad shots, day in and day out, and seldom be totally out of it. Most 4 (or 2, or 1) handicappers have never been tested in terms of those abilities and a numerical USGA index certainly does not capture that potential.

Fair enough, but, the argument remains that there are 3-4 handicap golfers that I believe could hang with LPGAers under the right conditions.  The Rothelisberger example atleast illustrates that a little...

[Sean_A]

I fall heavily on the side of the LPGA touring pro.  In fact, the more difficult and tighter the setup, the greater the odds of the touring pro.  Half the time in a tournament setup a 4 handicap can't play his way out of a paper bag.  I would say a 4 capper making the cut at a LPGA event would be a great success.

Ciao

[JMEvensky]

That's why these hypothetical "Pro against a so-and-so handicapper" questions are ill-formed IMO. There's a set of abilities needed to play and count all your bad shots, day in and day out, and seldom be totally out of it. Most 4 (or 2, or 1) handicappers have never been tested in terms of those abilities and a numerical USGA index certainly does not capture that potential.

Exactly.Hence Jones' "There's golf...".

[Jay Kirkpatrick]

I think some of you guys are missing the point of the thread.  The thread has to do with distance and whether or not it, under the right conditions, can negate handicap.  I say, unequivacally, yes.  These women yesterday (the creme de la creme of womens golf) were shooting 80s on a 6300 yard (albeit tricky and hard) golf course.  Throw them on a 7200 yard golf course with a 4 handicap that hits it 280-300 yards and you've got yourself a match.  The 4 may not win, but I think he (or she) would give a lower-tier female pro a run for their money in at least 3 out of 10 head-to-head matches

[JMEvensky]

I think some of you guys are missing the point of the thread.  The thread has to do with distance and whether or not it, under the right conditions, can negate handicap.  I say, unequivacally, yes.  These women yesterday (the creme de la creme of womens golf) were shooting 80s on a 6300 yard (albeit tricky and hard) golf course.  Throw them on a 7200 yard golf course with a 4 handicap that hits it 280-300 yards and you've got yourself a match.  The 4 may not win, but I think he (or she) would give a lower-tier female pro a run for their money in at least 3 out of 10 head-to-head matches

Jay Kirkpatrick,you have a very inflated view of 4 handicaps.Simply put,neither length nor any other factor would ever narrow the gap between a 4 and someone who plays for a living.If you want to make a Tour Pro(either gender) laugh,ask how close their respective skill levels are.

Tour Pro's can SCORE,it's what they do.Irrespective of the course or conditions,they either learn to score or they go broke.If your mythical,consistently 300-yard driving 4 handicap could score,he wouldn't be a 4 handicap.

[Bob_Huntley]

A week ago we held the California Girls Championship on the Dunes Course.

One of the finalists, was a tall elegant Korean girl who looked something like Michelle Wie and had a beautiful swing and a magic touch with the putter. The other girl was much shorter, stockier and very athletic. I watched the first hole of the final and the last. On the first hole of the Dunes, for those who have played it know that it is somewhat uphill and plays longer than the yardage. The shorter player hit it past the bunkers on the right and had a sand wedge into the green. On the 17th and last hole of the match the same player hit the drive something like 270 yards, chipped on and three putted to lose the match.

The winner was 14 and the loser 15 and both had plus handicaps. I cannot see a 4 handicapper beating these two kids from say, the 6800 yard markers let alone an LGPA member.

As an aside I remember playing with Kelly Leadbetter in 1992 when the US Open was being held at Pebble Beach. She hadn't played much and went out from the tips and shot even par. She was more than six months pregnant!

Bob 

[Brent Hutto]

The fallacy lies not in how difficult a wet, long, narrow 7,000 golf course is for an LPGA pro whose carry distance is 230 off the tee and maybe 200 on a good day from the fairway. They're going to have trouble keeping it anywhere close to par under those conditions. Something in the 75-80 range is likely. Stipulated.

The fallacy is saying "Drives it 300 yards" as those he's going to be walking 300 yards up the fairway 14 times a round and dropping the ball a short-iron from the green in a perfect lie. Not any big-hitting 4-handicapper I've ever seen. He's going to get three or four holes where he just "schools" the short-hitting lady pro. Drives it within wedge distance, hits it close and has 10-15 feet for birdie. He'll even make one or two of them if he's lucky.

It's what he does on the 6, 8, 10 holes where he a) does not get 300 yards out of it and b) is not in the fairway. And at least one or two of those 300-yard (potential) drives will be in the deep shit on a tournament setup. And unless he's a serious sandbagger, several of those bad drives (and BTW hitting it that long on most 7,000 yard tournaments setups it doesn't take much error to get screwed for your second shot) are going to be the occasion of an 8 or 9 or 10 on a hole. Assuming we're talking stroke play, our hypothetical lady pro will be tallying pars and bogeys with maybe the odd double somewhere along the line.

So her scorecard looks like a boatload of 4's and 5's with the odd three and a couple 6's. His scorecard looks an even mix of 3's, 4's, 5's, 6's, 7's and 8's with at least one "blow up" hole of 10 or 11 strokes. He can have the round of his life, make four birdies to her zero and still lose by half a dozen strokes. More likely he makes one birdie on a Par 5 (she pars them all) and shoots 85 with at least a couple of "others".

[Jay Kirkpatrick]

If all handicaps are created the same, then maybe we should frame the argument differently.  Perhaps another way to assess the distance issue is how an LPGA tour player would do at, say, the US Am.  US Ams are set up long and tough -- much more so than US Womens Opens.  Where do you think these elite LPGA players would fall in the mix?  I think they would struggle mightily (with maybe 5 in the overall top 10)... yet the LPGAers would far surpass their college counterparts on almost all levels of skill (short game, putting, iron play).  I just think distance makes too big of a difference in the current game, and that is a shame.

As an aside, I don't get all the anger towards my arguments on here.  Isn't disagreement what makes a healthy thread?  As my dad often says, "I've worked hard to earn my biases."  I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree...

[George Pazin]

As an aside, I don't get all the anger towards my arguments on here.  Isn't disagreement what makes a healthy thread?  As my dad often says, "I've worked hard to earn my biases."  I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree...

You're reading anger into simple disagreement. Just because I think you're crazy doesn't mean I hate you.

In all seriousness, you seem to be citing the rare exception to disprove the rule. I mentioned this thread to a friend of mine not even an hour ago. He's a legit 4, just lost in his club championship this past weekend to a guy who's dominated his club championship (a real name club, btw) for some 30 years now. He absolutely laughed at the premise of the thread and said there's simply no way to compare. He felt the guy he lost to - who's probably a +1 or so - could compete with an LPGA tour pro on a 7000 yard course, but knew that he would get killed.

Apples and oranges.

I once had a job interview that required sitting in a room all by my lonesome and figuring out a math problem that sounded easy but proved somewhat problematic. It wasn't until I went back to my roots and remembered to simplify that I figured it out, took me about 45 minutes. No one I know since has figured it out, btw. I don't add that to brag, just to illustrate the difference between doing it when it counts, and doing it off the cuff. You have to compare apples to apples and not get confused by the chaff.

Brent would figure it out it maybe 30 seconds...but he's a stat guru.

 

[JMEvensky]

As an aside, I don't get all the anger towards my arguments on here.  Isn't disagreement what makes a healthy thread?  As my dad often says, "I've worked hard to earn my biases."  I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree...

Apologies if I came across as angry and yes,disagreement does make for a healthy thread.Just type "Merion" and see how healthy things will soon get.

It's a pet peeve of mine that 4 handicaps really believe they've really got game.They don't.

I think your question regarding an LPGA player in the US Am is interesting on a couple of levels.I don't know that the course set up really matters;it's impossible for everyone equally.What would matter,IMO,is that it's match play.Purely speculating but my guess is that the really high-level male amateur player would be able to offset the LPGA player's consistency with power and birdie opportunities gained from shorter approaches.In match play,it wouldn't surprise me if a high-level amateur could hang with a mid-level LPGA pro.

[Jason Walker]

It's a pet peeve of mine that 4 handicaps really believe they've really got game.They don't.

Agreed.  It's also a pet peeve of mine when a 4 handicap shoots around even par on a 6700 yard course. 

[George Pazin]

It wouldn't surprise me either, but those guys in the US Am are plus 2,3,4+, not 4 handicappers.

[Kenny Baer]

Anyone who thinks a 4 index could hang with an LPGA tour pro has rocks in their brain.

I am a 5.1 index and have been as low as a 2.8 index.  MY BEST ROUND EVER!!!! is 73.

EVER!!!!!  That was from about 6,700 yds; my best round ever from 7k + is 75.

Any LPGA tour pro would be disappointed with my BEST ROUND EVER.

I could beat an LPGA tour pro....a bad one at that.....one who misses more than 1/2 her cuts.......1 out of 75-100 times.....if that.

I would literally have to play my very best and she would have to play her very very worst.

I agree that a top level Amateur is about the same caliber as an LPGA tour pro.  Probably a +1-+3 handicap index could play with them.

[Jay Kirkpatrick]

The handicap shouldn't make a difference... thats the point.  Given the earlier scale, I assume there would be some agreement that a lower-tier LPGAer equates to a +3 handicap.  Using that scale, do you think a long-hitting 7 handicap could hang with a scratch short-hitting player on a long golf course at least some of the time?  How about a 10 vs. 3 or a 15 vs. 8?  I think extreme length in a golf course can offset 4-6 strokes of "skill".  When we have "tough day" at our course, we have short-hitting 2-4 handicaps that can barely finish, much less contend. Meanwhile, long-hitting 10s shoot similar scores...

By the way, in the US Am example, I wasn't even considering the match play format.  I think the Ams would more than hold their own in a stroke play event on a difficult golf course...

[Brent Hutto]

The handicap shouldn't make a difference... thats the point.  Given the earlier scale, I assume there would be some agreement that a lower-tier LPGAer equates to a +3 handicap.

There's the root of the problem. I've seen those silly computations in the magazines and where ever that assign some sort of Course and Slope ratings to PGA Tour courses and compute that Greg Norman was playing to a +6.3 or whatever their numbers said. The LPGA Tour player doesn't equate to any number of the handicap scale, any more than Greg Norman did. It's a qualitative difference.