I've been studying the results each week this season, and noticed that for whatever reason, lower scores are becoming much more common, and as a result the difference between scores and the nominal SS ...
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I've been studying the results each week this season, and noticed that for whatever reason, lower scores are becoming much more common, and as a result the difference between scores and the nominal SSA is growing, meaning that handicaps end up being higher than they perhaps should be. So I decided to re-baseline the SSAs based on the results of the PDGA sanctioned events from the beginning of 2022 to today.
Those numbers confirmed that the current SSAs (46.3 from the short tees, 53 from the long) are a bit higher than recent results would support. Given that, I will be using new SSAs for next season (don't want to change something that significant as we get down to the last few weeks of this season). For next year, the SSAs will be:
Short (white) tees: 43.3 (down from 46.3)
Long (black) tees: 50.9 (down from 53)
Long front/short back: 47 (down from 49)
Once these changes are reflected in actual results from the first few weeks next year, you will likely see a reduction of about 1.6 in most handicaps, all other things being equal.
For those who are new (or newly interested) in the handicap system and what this all means:
The "SSA" or "Scratch Scoring Average" is the number used in the PDGA's rating system to calculate round ratings (and hence player ratings) -- it represents what a 1000-rated disc golfer would be likely to shoot on a given layout on a given day. In the PDGA's system, it is specific to a particular layout on a particular day with a particular set of players. It's not really feasible to calculate this for league rounds every week, so we've taken the average of the 1000-rated round scores for each layout for the most recent PDGA sanctioned events at ERP and used that as our SSA for handicap purposes. The reason for indexing the handicap to the PDGA's rating system is that it allows us to calculate a handicap for a first-time player who has no history in the league but does have a verifiable PDGA rating.
For those who must know more, the formula for calculating handicaps is:
For each week, calculate the difference between a player's score and the SSA for the layout played. Multiply that by 0.8. Then average those results across all weeks played. Or (<SSA> minus <score>) x 0.8 = handicap basis, averaged across all weeks.
Each week, a player's raw score is added to their handicap (a negative number in almost all cases) to determine their handicap-adjusted score. Order of finish based on adjusted score among those who played that day determines points awarded -- with 50 players, first place gets 50 points, second gets 49, etc., down to 50th which gets 1 point.
