[John Kavanaugh]

Happened on the first day of competition. The guy was a member, he quit the club after the tournament. I never knew the guy, cheaters can smell me a mile away.


Keith,


That's why I quit playing in stroke play competitions and only play match play in my group. It shouldn't be on me to enforce rules that no one understands. No way you can play 36 holes stroke play and not catch a lemon drop or worse.

[John Kavanaugh]

And that brings me to my earlier point. My friends know me well enough to look past me calling them on the rules. That's the least of my issues. But put a guy who accuses everyone of cheating with a bunch of strangers and he comes off as a douche at best. Like I said, cheaters and people who think they are cheating deserve each other. Where the hell does that leave an honest man? Alone.

[Carl Johnson]

I have always found this to be a useful reference in this type of discussion.

Brian, 74-70.2 is 3.8.  However, if you multiply that by 113 and divide by 126, then you get 3.4.  Which it seems to be what they seem to be saying you do.  However, their result is 3.8!  But when you combine -10.5 with 3.4, you get the -7.1 result they suggest you should get.  So, seems to me the 3.8 differential they've written should be 3.4.  At first I was confused.  I think the USGA just made a "typo" here. Addendum - I just took a look at Appendix E in the Manual currently on the USGA website.  They've corrected it to 3.4 there.

[Brian Finn]

I have always found this to be a useful reference in this type of discussion.

Brian, 74-70.2 is 3.8.  However, if you multiply that by 113 and divide by 126, then you get 3.4.  Which it seems to be what they seem to be saying you do.  However, their result is 3.8!  But when you combine -10.5 with 3.4, you get the -7.1 result they suggest you should get.  So, seems to me the 3.8 differential they've written should be 3.4.  At first I was confused.  I think the USGA just made a "typo" here. Addendum - I just took a look at Appendix E in the Manual currently on the USGA website.  They've corrected it to 3.4 there.

The USGA publishing something with bad math doesn't shock me.  I refer to this probability table on rare occasion (maybe once or twice per year) to see just how rare a round should be.  For example, I recently played a match against a player with a 9.5 index.  He shot 74, which resulted in a 3.1 differential for the round.  That's -6.4 vs. his index, which should be a 1 out of every 536 rounds occurrence.  Of course, I checked him on GHIN.com and he had posted fewer than 15 rounds in 2016, despite telling me he plays multiple times per week.

[David_Elvins]

The problem with that table is that it makes a regular event seem rare.  1 in 1200 seems like unlikely odds but one of my club's has about 1000 competition rounds a week so the event described will legitimately occur about once a week. 

[Jim Sherma]

Looking at the odds table supports my earlier point. Higher handicappers have a higher probability (lower odds) of shooting a high differential round, 1 in 101 for a 31+ versus the 1 in 1200 in the example and 1 in 2349 for a less than 5.9. Put 80-100 higher handicaps in a field and you get a high probability of one or more high differential rounds even without bagging.

[A.G._Crockett]

Looking at the odds table supports my earlier point. Higher handicappers have a higher probability (lower odds) of shooting a high differential round, 1 in 101 for a 31+ versus the 1 in 1200 in the example and 1 in 2349 for a less than 5.9. Put 80-100 higher handicaps in a field and you get a high probability of one or more high differential rounds even without bagging.

Correct.  And the low handicappers will ALWAYS say they got sandbagged.  It has always been thus, and always will be.

I served a sentence as president of the MGA at my former club.  One the very same day, I had a 15 handicap tell me he'd never play in another club tournament because they were rigged to favor the better players, and a plus handicap tell me he'd never play in another handicapped club tournament.

I figured we must be doing something right if they were both pissed off.

[John Kavanaugh]

Is "secretly shagging" cheating? Is it cheating for a 9 handicap to spend a week practicing for a big match? Honestly, it kinda is.

So, John, where do you draw the line? At what point does practicing become cheating?

I guess I don't draw the line near myself. I have a match this morning at the course I grew up that doesn't have a range. I already know that I'm going to have 10 wedges between 70 and 100 yds during the match. Been planning my "secretly shagging" sub rosa practice session all night. A bit of breakfast, 50 wedges, a few putts and a straight face. Gotta take a second over shirt along so they can see me sweating.

[Peter Pallotta]

This thread reminds me that sometimes the old-school ways are best.
I read a while ago about Dean Martin, when he was playing a lot of golf and almost always had money on the line.
Playing with someone for the first time, he'd ask: "When you're playing really well, what do you shoot"? And then he'd give/take strokes based on that.   
Seems smart and sensible to me, i.e. essentially, tell me what your best score will be. Rare the fellow, I think, who could look you in the eye and take your money after bettering by 3 or 4 strokes what he said was his "best score" just a couple of hours earlier. 

[Wayne_Kozun]

That USGA table makes some assumptions that may or may not be correct. They appear to be assuming that all handicappers with the same handicap range have the same distribution/variance/standard deviation of scores. I am guessing that they are also assuming that each individual player's scores follow a normal distribution. That may not be correct. Some golfers with an index of 5.0 may have a tight distribution of differentials whereas other players may have a very broad dispersion. For those two golfers the probabilities will be very different.

[cary lichtenstein]

I've seen every form of cheating. I used to play in a very big money game and it finally got the best of me and I quit. The most extreme was a guy we were playing with who didn't see me behind him in a very deep trap. He sound his sand wedge to a full high finish and threw the ball with his right hand at the same time.


I said "nice throw", which he denied. To make matters worse, he licked the bottom of his ball marker, so his 8 foot putt was nearly a gimme.


I got great pleasure in telling everybody about his throw and magic marker.

[Sean_A]

To make matters worse, he licked the bottom of his ball marker, so his 8 foot putt was nearly a gimme.

What does this mean?


Pietro


Confucius say folks making bets based on their best scores will soon have empty pockets.

Ciao

[Marc Haring]

Reminds me of the Guy that turned up at Sunningdale when Arthur Lees was the pro there and had a reputation of taking on anyone for serious money. The man said he was off nine so off they went with about a grand on the match. At the end Arthur walked into the clubhouse and the members asked how he got on. "Nine Fxxxxxg handicap, the bxxxxxd shot level par" said Arthur. "Never mind Arthur" the members said. Arthur replied, "Oh it didn't matter, I beat him one up" (apparently Arthur shot 61 that day!)

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