Handicap System:
The handicaps are based on rounds players have recorded during league play. As soon as a player has at least one round recorded, we can calculate the handicap. The handicaps are inde ...
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Handicap System:
The handicaps are based on rounds players have recorded during league play. As soon as a player has at least one round recorded, we can calculate the handicap. The handicaps are indexed to the same scale as the PDGA's rating system for reasons I'll explain later.
The simple version of the handicap formula is that it is:
Average ( SSA - Player Score ) x 0.8 = handicap
The scores and the SSAs are summed/averaged for all league rounds for the current year, and if a player has a handicap established from prior years, that is weighted into the total as if it were one round this year.
The Scratch Scoring Average (SSA) is the score that nominally would be a 1000-rated round for the layout played for a given day in the PDGA's rating system. When rating rounds for a PDGA-sanctioned tournament, the SSA is calculated for that day for the course/layout played, based on the ratings of the players and what they scored. For the purpose of handicap calculation for the league, we have determined a standard SSA for each layout at ERP (white and black), based on the ratings for tournament rounds on that layout in the past, scoring in past league rounds, and a certain amount of judgment. The SSA we use for the white tees at ERP is 46.3, while the SSA for the black tees is 53.
We use a standard 80% factor as is common in handicapping systems (most ball golf systems use something between 75% and 80%).
For example, a player shoots a 60 in their first league round. Subtracting 60 from 46.3 (White tee SSA) gives us -13.7. Multiplying -13.7 x 0.8 gives us -10.96, and rounding to an integer gives us -11. The next time they play, we'll again calculate the difference between the score and the SSA, average that with this week's round, and again multiply by 0.8.
We use the SSA system as the basis for the handicap for a couple of reasons -- one is that it allows the handicap to take account of the difference between the long (black) and short (white) tees in a way that using difference from par would not, and the other is that it puts the system on the same basis as the PDGA's rating system and thus if a player has a PDGA rating we can use it to calculate a temporary starting handicap that applies only for the first time a player plays in the league -- once a player has at least one league round recorded, the handicap is based purely on that for all future rounds and the rating-based handicap is discarded.
