Huck,
I'm not talking about cheating. I'm talking about the reason a golfer is out there on the course in the first place. Apparently, the people who designed the system can't imagine any reason for setting foot on the course other than to post the best score possible. Here's the thing...that's often not the reason I play golf.
So let's say you and I meet up this afternoon for a friendly game. Match play, five bucks a side, winner buys the drinks. To a pretty good approximation I'm going to be trying pretty hard on every shot to get the ball in the hole in few enough shots to win the hole. You'll be doing the same thing.
But there's a problem. You're giving me six strokes a side based on our USGA handicaps. It just so happens that in something like a third of the rounds that I post in the computer I was making no attempt at all to bear down and get the ball in the hole as efficiently as possible. I might be playing with four clubs, maybe I'm trying a new putter for the first time, maybe I'm playing a couple ProV1's I found instead of my Noodle, whatever. Heck, maybe I'm playing two balls on every hole and three on the one-shotter. I'm just out there by myself having a good old time and not keeping score.
Now there are all sort of band-aids in the handicap system that let me estimate a number to post on each hole. And if I get too far afield from the Rules then I'm supposed to just not post a score. But an awful lot of my play falls into that middle ground where I've got to post something but it's a very vague approximation of what I woulda, coulda, shoulda scored that day if you'd have been there to play me for a little money.
Why all the bandaids? The system ought to be based on those rounds I play in friendly games or at the Saturday dogfight at my club or in GCA events. I play 50-60 rounds a year where I'm actually shooting a score on each hole and not just screwing around. But my screwing around is always tempered by having to track in the back of my mind how to represent each hole when I get back to the computer in the clubhouse. It's stupid and it detracts from the game.
I bailed out of the system for 3+ months this fall. I just said no, didn't post anything after Labor Day weekend. My golf swing turned to crap this summer, I've had back trouble and a lot of non-golf stuff on my mind and no patience for dealing with a silly system. Perhaps the honorable thing to have done is keep posting some estimated 110 or 98 or whatever each time I set foot on the course. But the resulting 30 index isn't useful to handicapping a real match. At my new club (as of Dec. 1) I've started playing in the weekend dogfights and have to use my last index of 21.1 which I can't play to. After I've posted a handful of rounds this month I'll get an up to date index of 23, 24, whatever that reflects how I'm playing but in the mean while I don't really have a valid handicap. Kind of sucks but it'll all sort out at the end.