With Golf Australia implementing its new digital portal to replace GolfLink, managing editor Steve Keipert runs his eyes over the subtle art of handicap manipulation.
Here’s a story that’s all too common in club golf. Two golfers at a club where I was formerly a member began winning a disproportionately high percentage of club competitions. They were in that difficult-to-gauge mid-handicap range where it’s possible to play much worse than you are capable of and make it appear legitimate, but where it’s also eminently possible to score far better. Handicaps would drift out in unimportant rounds, and like clockwork, a decent prize would come up and the winner(s) became predictable. Whispers abounded throughout the membership, but little was done about it until well after I’d moved away from the area and left the club.
Another story: years ago, Australian Golf Digest ran a series of best-ball tournaments in the eastern states with a healthy array of prizes on offer, plus the chance to progress to a national final where an overseas extension of the event was the ultimate prize. During one of the state events, a pair who we later learned were notorious in their region for coming out of the woodwork when a valuable prize was on offer entered and won the day… by a good 10 or so Stableford points. I can still hear the collective scorn from the rest of the room as they walked up to collect their prizes at the presentation.
We conducted a bit of investigative work on the pair between that event and the national final, including enquiring of other pairs events they’d teamed to win. We discovered one was a former 4-handicapper playing off a mark many multiple times higher, while their counterpart had a similarly dubious record. They’d cooked the system, so we decided to turn up the temperature and ‘managed’ the format of the national final to even the field by applying what in horse-racing circles would be deemed corrective weighting.
Handicap-manipulation stories are as old as club golf, but is the system more difficult or less difficult to manoeuvre today than in the past? And, where does (and where should) the scrutiny come from?
This month marks the next era in handicapping in Australian golf. On October 2, the new Golf Australia CONNECT system takes effect after a lengthy establishment process. Set to be more closely aligned to the World Handicap System, under Golf Australia CONNECT, golfers can expect to play from a slightly different handicap from this month.
However, when it comes to integrity, no system is foolproof. In any endeavour, the moment you assign a field of competitors anything but the same parameters, it’s open to exploitation.
Even golf, with its premise of honesty, is not immune to that trust being abused, which is where the game finds itself exposed. It’s like an unmanned roadside fruit-and-veggie stall – you hope and expect people to do the right thing and leave money in the box, but there’ll always be some who pinch and go.
Is handicap manipulation cheating or merely working the system? I’d argue most golfers wouldn’t hesitate to call it cheating, regardless of whether it’s shrewdly calculated or blatant.
Either way, the safest way to expunge the game of handicap manipulators is to not condone it [below]. Like most dubious deeds in life, it takes root if people ignore the practice.
Top 5 ways to eradicate handicap manipulators
5. “Hit them with a 3-iron” (with thanks to David Crawford on our Facebook page for that militant suggestion).
4. Call them out (sans 3-iron). Perhaps just a quiet word in the locker room or an out-of-the-way corner of the clubhouse. Maybe not quite Robert De Niro’s “circle of trust” directive in “Meet the Parents”, but just a little chat that clearly says, I know what you’re up to.
3. Do away with club competitions – prizes and entry fees. If any group wants to add a little spice to a round, they can work out their chosen wagers and handicaps themselves. Regular playing partners know each other’s ability levels.
2. Play more scratch events – perhaps held across more grades – or more events where the gross score is the main prize.
1. If the proof is clear: suspension. Otherwise, place any golfers under suspicion in the same group as the club captain or president for a few rounds… and then compare the scoring.
