How does your golf league handicap players?
 

My golf league starts today. We only play 9 holes since the league starts at 4:30 in the afternoon. My question is how does your league come up with the handicaps for the players? Mine does 18 hole handicaps but cuts it in half since we only play 9, every other week the handicaps change depending on how you play. I've gone down to a 9 as my lowest but we have a few 3&4 handicap players.

I don't know actually how our league worked. The guy that does the handicaps told us the one time that they should actually be lower than what they are, but he changes the program to reflect an 18 holes handicap.

Our course didn't have a league last year, b/c no one wanted to keep track of the scores. Before that, I don't know what kind of handicap we were on, but it was not a simple formula, I can assure you of that.

there is a guy in my office that is the commish of the one out here (which I doubt I play in), I'll ask him

Never heard of cutting a index in half? In all the handicap leagues I have ever played in, we also only played nine holes each week, but we played the front nine one week, back nine the next week. Only official handicaps are used.
Our league format is match play. We play 3, 3 hole matches each worth 2 points. There are also 2 points awarded to the team with the lowest total stroke total for the 9 holes, so even though it is match play, all holes must be played out.
Been doing this way at my home course since the course opened in 59. They also have a couple of other format's but this is one I play in.

Our league uses handicap based on play at the course we play on only. For new members, it's done after 3 rounds (9 holes each). Then the scores are averaged, and we use an index of 96% of that number (that's how the software is set up). Seems like every year or so we change how many rounds are played before we adjust handicaps, I believe right now it's 3, maybe 4.

Uses our course handicap for whichever 9 holes we are playing (have 27 holes). We play 9 holes every Fri night similar to you. The computer tracks your rounds and combines scores from 9 hole scores into 18 hole scores for index purposes.

Are league starts sat, we have36 guys and everyone posted their own handicap to start, and each week it will change to reflect your score, we play points so if you sy your a 5 and really a 12, your only hurting yourself

i've played a couple different ways...
we had a nice 12 man league and for a couple years, we played straight up...which wasn't bad since everyone was fairly close in average, and each member played with everyone once during the season. that wasn't bad.
we finally switched it over to some sort of hdcp percentage. i forget the details, but this has worked out much better, especially for playoffs...so they've since stuck with this format.

my current league, which i've only played in for 1 year so far, pretty much used a "straight stroke" and called it a hdcp.
for instance, if you're average score is 39 on a par 36, then your hdcp for 9 holes was 3.
average score 53, hdcp is 17.
no index, no hdcp, not factoring in front or back 9, nor senior tees for some of the older gentlemen in the league.

so let's say both teams' partners are the same hdcp. Team A = 6 hdcp, Team B = 34....34-6=28. Team A gives 28 strokes to Team B on 9 holes.
stupid! right?!

needless to say, there will be some changes this year, or i will be seeking out another league.

Yes, but in leagues, it is often the 5 reporting himself as a 12 that is the problem, hence the term, sandbagging. Sandbagging has always been the dark side of handicapping. Same thing happens in bowling. Some people are just hooked on winning and will do anything to win.

Yeah but that would only work for the first week, the guy running it has a program to calculate handicap every week, and aftert 3 weeks you say your a 12 and playing to a 5, you first week scores will be adjusted, so there is really no way of sandbagging

The commish that runs our league tried explaining to when I started that's the best I could figure it out. If you play someone with a higher handicap than you, you give them a certain amount of strokes over the 9 holes. No strokes are given on par 3's though.

Your league is doing something completely different. I see what your saying. Your league has its own system for the handicapping.
I was just talking about sandbagging in general, when you have a league like ours that is run off of a official index. Your system does seem to address the age old problem.

The bottom line is there are many ways of running a league and we are all use to something slightly different. Lots of format's.

We only use establised indexes and calculate handicaps based on the rating and slope of the 9 we are playing. I play a lot of 9 hole rounds and enter those scores into GHIN. GHIN then combines the scores to create your index. The problem is that they make no adjustment that 9 hole rounds are a lot easier than 18 hole rounds (at least for me). I have several combined scores that are