Question for you guys -

In league play do you ever take 90% of the player's handicap or haircut them by some fraction? We actually include all scores, not just 10/20 times 96%, and take no haircut.

I think it biases the league toward the guys with 20 handicaps, which is not really great for competition.

The prevailing arguement is that the better player should win. I'm not sure this is correct.

If a guy shoots 100 on straight average and has +/- 7% volatility and shoots 93, 107, 93, 107, his 93 beats the better player every time, no matter how great the better golfer plays.

I don't think the better golfer can pull 7 strokes out of his rear end. EG: if my average score is 84, I can't pull out a 77 half of the time to keep pace with the clown I'm playing.

I my company league we take the best 5 of the last 7 scores, average them, and then multiply by 96%. This seems to be pretty fair.

Is this a team competition or individual? Does everyone have a USGA handicap index? Your concerns about being "fair", is exactly the reason why the USGA handicap system measures "potential" (not average score) and uses the best 10 scores out of 20 scores, Equitable Stroke Control (ESC), and multiplies differentials by .96. By the way, in the USGA handicap index system, multiplying by .96 IS a "haircut" that is designed to reward excellence (the better player); "Slope" is designed to help the bogey golfer on a difficult course. Also, remember the USGA handicap systems is designed to accommodate many different types of competitions, e.g stroke vs. match; 1 day vs. 4 day.

If it's an individual competition, then Handicap Indexes are already calculated according to the USGA handicap system and then converted to a Course Handicap (to allow for the course rating and slope and for the set(s) of tees being played). For team competitions, a "handicap allowance" (e.g. 90%) can be made to make it more fair when one team has high handicaps and another low. The procedure to do all this is spelled out in the USGA handicap manual.

For the USGA handicap manual, go here: http://www.usga.org/playing/handicaps/manual/manual.html
Section 9 covers handicap competitions, and 9-3 covers "handicap allowances". Maybe this will help.

I'm on two leagues. In one we take the last 5 scores and take 75% of the diff from par. We also have a simplified form of ESC. I think 7 is the max.

On the other league (with crappier players), we take the last 6, drop the high and low, and take 80%.

USGA handicap just doesn't work that well with golf leagues because you have so much player turnover. And then what do you do for subs?

So it all depends on what you want to accomplish. The league in which we drop high and low, the handicap moves much more slowly. It's more fair for everyone because many players could shoot 43, or shoot 57, depending on the phase of the moon, apparently!

The other league which we don't drop, since the players are much better, there's less variance in scores to begin with.

Interestingly enough, both of my 9 hole handicaps is very close to half of my real USGA handicap! (within 1/2 shot)

good feedback. This league is too informal for real handicaps.
I like hearing similar set-ups have a haircut.

I understand that the USGA is measuring potential, and I would love for us all to use our USGA handicaps, but I think only about 10% of us have real handicaps.

I am going to lean the organizer to haircut the handicaps.

Is there a resource that people look to for precedent league handicap strategies? Something I can show our organizer?

Why not use a Callaway System.
http://golf.about.com/cs/golfterms/g/bldef_calsystem.htm

Handicaps are calculated AFTER the round.
Of course, will not work for match play.
Does your league play full field stroke play, or match play?

We play mostly four-man team competitions with handicap adjustments using official USGA handicaps. 2 best balls (after handicap strokes) would be an example of a typical game.

We used 90% handicaps for a while, but did some analysis and the lower handicap players were winning slight more than their participation rates. So we changed back to 100% handicaps.

It wasn't a night and day difference, FWIW.

dave

Uh, actually, I wouldn't expect much of a change. Low cappers in a best ball...
I tend to believe both lower cappers playing poorly on the same hole,
would be much less common than two higher cappers both playing poorly on
the same hole. Just the nature of the better player. I'm a firm believer that
better players have a distinct advantage when paired together in team competition.

Two single cappers against two teen cappers (getting a stroke on the hole)...
chances are strong that at least one of the singles pars (or better) the hole.
Since they're giving a stroke, it's one of the tougher holes, and wouldn't surprise
me to see the two teens both double, and lose the hole. Just percentages.

Unless they got me, and another single in my group today,
who both tripled 16.

It was four-man teams, if that matters.

We did another interesting experiment in a different (much smaller) group that plays a similar format. In this group we generally try to balance the handicaps in each foursome (again, four-man teams). A couple of times we have put the 'low handicappers' (in this case indexes 4-8) in their own group and then the other (usually a total of four groups) groups had balance indexes (but no 'low handicappers').

We've done this twice now and the low handicappers came in last both times.

In our experience teams with indexes 'across the board' do better than anything else - at least for the formats that we play.

dave