Stableford

[Bob_Huntley]

Another thread made mention of the pencil, scorecard and the necessity of posting scores.

I was wondering how many of you ever play a round using the Stableford format? Quite possibly the most fun way to hold an informal joust with a group of of keen competitors. Non American players do it all the time.


Bob 

[Will Peterson]

I never played Stableford until I moved to London.  Haven't played it since I got back to the States.

I loved it.  Great game for groups, especially ones with a variety of handicaps.  It also helps with pace of play since you can just pick up, and I loved not having to finish a hole when things went bad.  It just feels better on the next tee when you don't have to admit to a double or worse.  Just no points and go.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Bob,

Certainly not as uncommon as foursomes in American golf, it pops up from time to time in my club tourneys.

And for England, let's not forget Dr. Frank his ownself never won one of his namesake tournaments. Jeez, if you're going to mark the deck make sure only you can read the marks!

I digress...

[Garland Bayley]

My understanding is that Stableford is just inverse scoring with cutoffs.
How is that different than regular scoring with ESC?
Other than high wins not low?

[Matthew Sander]

Bob,

We used to have a Sunday late afternoon group that played 9 holes with a modified stableford. Depending on the week there were anywhere from 4 to 20 guys. It was a great way for those of us with family duties to get out on the course for a little match on the weekend.

Everyone was assigned an initial budget based on our point system (1 pt. bogey, 2 pt. par, 3 pt. birdie, etc...0 pts. for doubles or worse) and that budget fluctuated up or down each week whether you exceeded your budget or came up short. The winner was whoever exceeded their total by the most points. You were never quite sure what that winning margin would be. It usually took at least a 3 point cushion, but I saw as little as +1 win and as much as +8. $5/man, winner takes the pot.

It was great fun and a way for a wide range of abilities to have a match. There was no small subset that seemed to win more than others. Most of the guys had some success now and again. The hardest part was establishing an initial budget for newcomers. Initial budgets were usually set at the high end of the player's ability and over time they would become more accurate. Everyone had to go through that adjustment phase, but it was still a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, several of the mainstays moved and others acquired a permanent tee time on Sunday mornings and the game kind of fell apart. It is a shame because it was great fun and I'd love to eventually be a part of a similar group...

[Mike Sweeney]

Another thread made mention of the pencil, scorecard and the necessity of posting scores.


Bob 

Sunday @ 8:00 AM, New Haven, CT and then lets go play The Gammy Golf Club and have some Malaria medicine at The Gammy Golf Club !! 

[Greg Chambers]

The course I used to play every day in Colorado did a Monday Stableford/Skins game.  Each players' handicap determined their point quota, and the player with the most points above their quota was the winner.  High and low handicappers could compete just the same.  It was a ton of fun.  Best part was after double bogey you just pick up, so lesser players could enjoy themselves as well, along with keeping the pace of play moving.

[David_Elvins]

Easily the most popular game in Australia where most clubs run competitions 4-6 times a week. 

Important competitions are usually stroke.  Stableford and Par rotate through the other days. 

As others have said, it keeps things moving, with stroke competitions generally taking about 1/2 hour longer.

[Pete_Pittock]

Our group uses it every day on our annual Bandon outing, maybe once or twice a year at my club in Oregon. We also use an alternative handicap hole allocation table based on stroke play rather than net pay.

[Duncan Cheslett]

In the UK Stableford rules are used for most everyday competitions, as well as informal games between friends. Strokeplay is generally used only for 'Monthly Medal' competitions or majors.

As a relative newcomer to golf I love Stableford. Most of my rounds contain the odd nightmare hole. Stableford means that these aberrations do not ruin my whole card - I simply pick up without scoring on that hole and a couple of net birdies on subsequent holes are enough to get me back on track.

Its not just for 'improving' players , either. All but the very elite club golfers seem to prefer Stableford comps.

[David_Tepper]

I am a big Stableford fan, as I think it is the best competitive format for other than scratch golfers. As a matter fact, I am playing in a Stableford comp at Fortrose today and a Stableford comp at Tain tomorrow!  

[Sean_A]

At Burnham we even go so far as to play three throw ups a week using Stableford each with three players; only two scores to count each hole (its called a Bowmaker) and nobody gets help looking for a ball - the goal obviously being to finish quickly.  Only one Saturday a month is a medal, all the others are Stableford comps and the Stablefords are much better supported.  I much prefer Stableford to medal, but understand that the important few club comps need to be medal or matchplay.

Ciao

[John Mayhugh]

I've only played it once or twice in the US. The format works great for multiple groups of people playing together. 

[Adam Lawrence]

I knew Stableford wasn't as common in the US, but I hadn't realised just how uncommon it was till I played a couple of rounds during the ASGCA annual meeting last week. I won't say there was confusion, but it made me realise just how deeply embedded Stableford is in UK golfing culture. It's just second nature, after making a par four on a hole where you have a stroke to say 'four for three for three' when asked your score.

[Steve Kline]

Stableford is fun, but I think it is totally pointless if it is 1 point for bogey, 2 points for par, 3 points for birdie etc. Then we are just reversing the scoring (plus is better instead of minus) and eliminating anything over a bogey. Might as well just play regular golf and take no more than double. It should be more like 1 for bogey, 2 for par, 4 for birdie, 8 for eagle.

[Brent Hutto]

There are maybe 6-8 games a week (standing, organized games) at my club that play "points". It's as Steve just said, basically inverse scoring and pick up if you don't make bogey. We add in each team's handicap strokes at the end to make it pseduo-Stableford. I'd say less than half the guys who play in these games would recognize the name "Stableford". It's just "the points game" or "points".

Which is just as well. The way they do the handicap strokes it does not work out the same as Stableford anyway. The pick up after bogey part is supposed to be pick up after net bogey, right? Given that the average handicap in these games is around 10 or so that makes a big difference in the picking-up part.

So occasionally someone influential in a group will insist on trying it by allocating the handicap strokes. Which everyone hates. But if they are going to allocate the strokes they often just score it like net medal play and use the ESC limit for each player. So it's a bastardized use of a the Handicap rules instead of bastardized use of Stableford scoring. That's extremely infrequent, though. Almost always "points". Oh well.

I have played in maybe two actual Stableford games in my life. One individual and one on teams.

[Mark Pearce]

I'm puzzled by a couple of responses to this thread from US posters.  Steve's is a good example.  Effectively these posts say that Stableford is just a reverse stroke play format.  I know that in US golf doe handicap purposes anything over double bogey counts as a double (CONGU is the same).  However, these posts suggest that the same is true in competition.  That is, that the score is modified to a double bogey even when playing strokeplay.  Surely that isn't right?  The benefit of Stableford is that once a player can't score a point he can pick up.  I wish it were true that once I couldn't beat double bogey in a medal I could pick up.

Interestingly, I was extremely fortunate to play CPC on Friday with a group of 10 or so.  The format of the game we played was better ball Stableford.

[Brent Hutto]

Mark,

Among double-digit and high single-digit handicappers at least (I hang around with far more of them than scratch and low-cappers) the ESC score and the "score" are confounded pretty thoroughly in casual play. Except for a club championship or other occasional true stroke-play tournament, why would they care about their true score?

The game as played most days by most people at a typical USA club of my experience is to generate a number to be typed religiously into the computer and to win or lose money in a small-stakes game with ones friends. The money game is either better-ball match play or it is some pseudo-medal game in which double is worse than bogey but triple or X is no worse than double. Usually team games.

Nobody in the 8-and-up handicap bracket seems to care much about regular engagement in medal play. The scorekeeping is all for bragging (or bitching) rights after the round and to type into the computer. So they adopt the ESC principle, or something like it, as part of the game rather than as a bookkeeping adjustment for the handicap system. It's part of how they deal with the cognitive dissonance between the kind of game they are willing to play 100+ times a year and the kind of game the well-intentioned doofuses at the USGA assumed they are playing when they set up the handicap system.

I seriously doubt that this sort of mind-game is common among players of Steve Kline's level or even among most 3, 4, 5 handicappers. But it's a muddled mess for us high-markers.

[Steve Kline]

Good post Brent - especially the part about how people actually play vs. the ideal handicap system the USGA set up. At my level I think I should post my score as is no adjustment. But I only post no more than double per the rules. Also, if it is an actual tournament I post the actual score because tournament scores are treated differently.

[Garland Bayley]

Stableford is fun, but I think it is totally pointless if it is 1 point for bogey, 2 points for par, 3 points for birdie etc. Then we are just reversing the scoring (plus is better instead of minus) and eliminating anything over a bogey. Might as well just play regular golf and take no more than double. It should be more like 1 for bogey, 2 for par, 4 for birdie, 8 for eagle.

I agree that it is pointless. The only advantage to playing in a Stableford competition is that you use ESC score in the result instead of full medal score. The first time I played in a Stableford, I assumed scoring was like modified Stableford I had seen at Castle Pines. When I figured out it was just inverse scoring, I proceeded to play just the same as I play in medal play in subsequent events.

I asked as the second post to this thread if it was just inverse of ESC? No one addressed the question, but the posts have clarified it is just inverse ESC for everyone I know, who pick up in informal play after reaching ESC. But then I belong to that group of high handicappers who see no point in making a bad hole worse when not in formal medal competition.

[Kalen Braley]

Bob,

Excellent post.  I've played this a few times and had good fun with it.  The point structure encourages more aggressive play and its something interesting to get away from the usual strokes mindset

We used our own modified points version of it, being weekend warriors and all.

Eagle - 6
Birdie - 3
Par - 1
Bogey - 0
Double Bogey or worse -  -2

[Scott Warren]

I can't get my head around this line that guys in the US are playing stroke rounds using ESC not just for handicapping but for scoring and then sitting around the clubhouse telling people "I shot a 78" when that 78 included any number of holes where you picked your ball up and wrote down double bogey!

You'd get laughed out of the club if you tried that in the UK or Aus!

My understanding, in any case, was that ESC was a nett double bogey, not scratch double bogey?

[Bill_McBride]

I can't get my head around this line that guys in the US are playing stroke rounds using ESC not just for handicapping but for scoring and then sitting around the clubhouse telling people "I shot a 78" when that 78 included any number of holes where you picked your ball up and wrote down double bogey!

You'd get laughed out of the club if you tried that in the UK or Aus!

My understanding, in any case, was that ESC was a nett double bogey, not scratch double bogey?

If I recall correctly:

0-9 hdcp.      Gross double bogey.

10-19 hdcp.   7 strokes

20-29 hdcp.    8 strokes

30 and up.      9 strokes

[Brent Hutto]

Bill has it correct. The handicap that matters is course handicap and it determines the ESC limit according to Bill's chart.

The typical after-round conversation in the groups I play would proably most times make the distinction between a real 78 and a 78 with a couple of pick-ups. Most people would say something like "I had a 78 but picked up twice". I'd probably say something more like "It'll go in the computer as a 92 but it was way worse than that". Most poeple seem perfectly aware it's not a real score, they just have no particular interest in the real score as it matters not for the team game, for their bets or for the computer.

[Tim Bert]

Bob - I like Stableford, but I still prefer "Monuments"

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,30935.msg600803.html#msg600803