Handicap and its negative effect on golf course architecture/maintenance

[Doug Siebert]

...
Which is to say a relatively high handicap guy who hits it short and straight and never really in trouble is going to be better served looking at the course rating, despite this higher index.

Not sure this is a good rule of thumb, because length is by far the greatest determinant of slope.

I assume you meant to type course rating here, not slope...

Take a short straight bogey golfer, he doesn't care about length because he doesn't need to reach anything in regulation to make his bogey.  For the holes short enough he can reach them in regulation, he has an opportunity to get ahead.  Where length matters for him is in the position of forced carries on the hole.  A course that lets you roll the ball on the green versus one you have to fly it in is going to make a lot more difference for this guy than a few hundred extra yards of length, because he might need to layup instead of taking a fairway wood at the green in those situations.

[Sean_A]

I liked the very old system.
Course was rated, you took the best 10 of your 20 scores, looked it up your total on a chart and voila... your handicap.

Handicaps are merely around so folks can compete fairly.

Tony

I would say that handicaps allow players to compete unfairly.  How is giving strokes to someone that is not as good as you fair?  Handicaps are around to make games more competitive. 

I would take the opposite view of Tom and say handicaps really tend to make courses harder because an archie/green committee can always say that the marker has a shot and can still earn a net 4 if he plays smartly. 

Like Jason above mentioned, I would much prefer the bogey system brought back for handicap players and par used only for expert players - as it was meant to be originally.  I think handicxapping would be far easier to properly handicap people if the two groups never competed against each other.  The wider the handicap gap, the less accurate handicapping is.

Ciao