If you only play your home course, is your handicap too low?

[A.G._Crockett]

And regarding home course advantage.  When I played senior interclub matches years ago I do not recall noticing a difference between my win/loss at home and win/loss away.  (I noticed some other things about handicaps of our opponents, one in particular, but not that.  That club was notorious for its sandbaggers.  In fact, one year when they qualified for the playoffs on account of their season-long performance the league disqualified them from the playoffs for that reason.)

Fwiw:


I captain our 65+ interclub team, and also play on the 55+ team; both are in 5 team pods, and play 6 matches, 3 at home and 3 away.  I think it’s fair to say that the players at each club “know” the other courses in the pod better than they would for most away courses from years of competition, plus the availability of practice rounds.


The record this year so far in the two pods we’re in is 20-8-1 in favor of the home teams, with one match remaining.  That’s almost a 70% win rate for the home team, and I think the CGA says that holds true year after year.  The home course advantage is significant enough so that in the playoffs, two of the four four ball matches are played simultaneously at each course, with the “Final Four” on a neutral site.




Do with that what you will.

[Rob Marshall]

I’ve always thought that courses in Florida were rated easier than they played. In Florida if you hit your drive right or left you’re in water taking a drop and hoping to make bogie. In western NY you hit the same tee shot and you’re in the trees but have a good chance to save par or even once in a while hit a really great shot and make birdie.

[Wayne_Kozun]

Years ago I joined a new club and a number members I was introduced to all told me the same thing; “your handicap is about to go up but you’ll appreciate it when you travel”. Initially I didn’t quite understand their meaning, but sure enough after a summer of play my handicap had increased by a stroke and a half. Now, you could chalk that up to being new to the course, but even after years and years of play it still was elevated. There is something about the course that makes it play quite difficult that is not clearly accounted for in its rating. Some small collection of fractional strokes that continuously lead to higher scores. For interclub matches, we had a great advantage. Not because of innate course knowledge, but because our home course handicaps.

Maybe that is more of an issue with how course and slope ratings are done.  And it sounds like the members of your club liked it that way.


But this is something that the USGA should be able to analyze using the data that they have.  If the members of your club have lower diffs at away courses than the home course then I would argue that the diffs are incorrect due to wrong course and slope ratings.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

I’ve always thought that courses in Florida were rated easier than they played. In Florida if you hit your drive right or left you’re in water taking a drop and hoping to make bogie. In western NY you hit the same tee shot and you’re in the trees but have a good chance to save par or even once in a while hit a really great shot and make birdie.

You're likely considering how you play it EVERY round, while your counting scores only come from your best 8 of 20 rounds. On your best 8 of 20 you're not as likely to hit it in the water, etc.

If anything, I've seen Florida courses I think are slightly over-rated… because they'll assign a "3" for trees when there is like two palm trees on the entire hole. A 3 at some northeastern courses is… a bunch of pine trees all down the left side and a few oaks on the right.    (Slightly exaggerated — that sounds like a 4 or a 5 to me, ha ha.)

Your "feel" is a common one, though, and maybe they are slightly under-rated. But as a golfer you generally consider all of your rounds, not the best ones that count toward your index (which is all the course rating is really about - your handicap index).

[Rob Marshall]

I’ve always thought that courses in Florida were rated easier than they played. In Florida if you hit your drive right or left you’re in water taking a drop and hoping to make bogie. In western NY you hit the same tee shot and you’re in the trees but have a good chance to save par or even once in a while hit a really great shot and make birdie.

You're likely considering how you play it EVERY round, while your counting scores only come from your best 8 of 20 rounds. On your best 8 of 20 you're not as likely to hit it in the water, etc.

If anything, I've seen Florida courses I think are slightly over-rated… because they'll assign a "3" for trees when there is like two palm trees on the entire hole. A 3 at some northeastern courses is… a bunch of pine trees all down the left side and a few oaks on the right.    (Slightly exaggerated — that sounds like a 4 or a 5 to me, ha ha.)

Your "feel" is a common one, though, and maybe they are slightly under-rated. But as a golfer you generally consider all of your rounds, not the best ones that count toward your index (which is all the course rating is really about - your handicap index).

I actually based my feeling on my handicap. I played around 35 rounds in Florida between January and May 15th. Probably had another 15 in the fall down there too. Came back to NY and my handicap has come back down.


I understand what you are saying. Could also have to do with different grasses on every course down there and higher winds that we tend to get in western NY. I think the courses are a little more penal.

[Carl Johnson]

I’ve always thought that courses in Florida were rated easier than they played. In Florida if you hit your drive right or left you’re in water taking a drop and hoping to make bogie. In western NY you hit the same tee shot and you’re in the trees but have a good chance to save par or even once in a while hit a really great shot and make birdie.

You're likely considering how you play it EVERY round, while your counting scores only come from your best 8 of 20 rounds. On your best 8 of 20 you're not as likely to hit it in the water, etc.

If anything, I've seen Florida courses I think are slightly over-rated… because they'll assign a "3" for trees when there is like two palm trees on the entire hole. A 3 at some northeastern courses is… a bunch of pine trees all down the left side and a few oaks on the right.    (Slightly exaggerated — that sounds like a 4 or a 5 to me, ha ha.)

Your "feel" is a common one, though, and maybe they are slightly under-rated. But as a golfer you generally consider all of your rounds, not the best ones that count toward your index (which is all the course rating is really about - your handicap index).

Two comments from my ratings experience (North Carolina courses).


We had a guy on a team who had come from Florida and was "certified" in Fla.  Partway through we discovered he was ignoring elevation changes in measuring and writing up his data.  Explanation: "We don't have elevation changes in Florida, so we don't worry about that."  Needless to say, more work had to be done to finish.


Second, the instructions on taking marginal trees into account were a problem.  I don't recall the details, but I do remember being somewhat disturbed by what I thought was their failure to adequately distinguish between even one tree, a row of trees, and a forest.

[Steve Wilson]

Of course it is.

[A.G._Crockett]

How’s this?


If you play fully under the Rules in all rounds, your handicap will be an accurate reflection of your demonstrated ability.


But if you play almost exclusively at your home course, it isn't likely that when you DO play an away round, that score will be one of your best 8 of the last 20.  It could be; the odds just aren’t good.


This doesn’t mean that handicaps from your club don’t “travel well”; it’s just the nature of being very familiar with how to play best your home course, but less so when you are away.

[Jim Sherma]

As someone that plays different courses fairly often (my current handicap has 10 different courses on it - 3 of the 8 rounds counting were on the road) I tend to think that my handicap would be slightly lower if I played 18 of 20 rounds at my home club instead of 10 of 20. Where I feel like I bleed shots on the road is on three dimensions:


1) Putting - primarily speed control and understanding the uphill/downhill nature of the greens, right left reading doesn't cause me much trouble, but I can misread the speed by some larger margins resulting in three-putts.
2) Indecision - at my home club, or courses that I have played a lot I tend to have less indecision as to yardages and knowing the good miss/bad miss trade offs of the shots - it is easier to commit and execute a good stroke if you can commit fully to the shot at hand
3) Compounding Errors - I find that not knowing a course can lead to compounding errors once you get out of position - this can be due to not knowing where the bad misses are and/or simply trying to get more than you can out of a hole - it can work to your favor where you hit a shot to a good outcome when you know after the fact that you would never have played it on repeated plays, however these cases tend not to outweigh the hole or two where you just hit it into the wrong spot not knowing that it was the wrong shot to have been trying in the first place


None of these are directly a cause of GCA or the rating process, rather a function of the way I score on average relative to "demonstrated ability". On the road I feel like I "left some out there" more so than I do on my home courses. I also tend to get the lowest differential rounds on my home course because of less mistakes on the greens and knowing how to more efficiently clean up my messes when I do get out of position.


To answer the OP I would say that a home course handicap is not too low in that it accurately assesses your demonstrated ability on your home course. Handicaps that don't travel do feel too low however. When you play at home many of the mental skills of course knowledge, green reading and the like are not necessarily obvious and just happen through repetition. It is harder for an amateur to transfer and/or create this knowledge on the fly when travelling to other courses.