Handicaps in Finland (and other countries on the European mainland) are administrated according to the European Golf Association Handicap System which is comprehensively described in a 100 page document that the EGA maintains. The most recent version (revised 1st Jan 2012) includes provisions (in section 3.15) for a mandatory and automatic Annual Handicap Review. For anyone that is interested, that document can be found by clicking the picture on the right. |
Overview of the process
1. Check for "inactive" players
2. Perform some calculations based on the scores of each "active" player
3. Compare the results to the expected range and make adjustments
1. Check for "inactive" players
Players with "inactive" handicaps are not considered further in the Annual Handicap Review.
2. Calculations based on scores of each player
3. Compare the results to the expected range and make adjustments
- If the player's median score is within 2.9 points of the expected median score then no adjustment is done
- If the player's median score is 3.0-4.9 points away from the expected median score then their handicap is adjusted by one shot (up or down)
- If the player's median score is 5.0 or more points away from the expected median score then their handicap is adjusted by two shots (up or down)
Impact on the handicaps of Kytäjä Golfers
My thoughts on this process
The handicapping system is also central to 95% of the competitive golf played at Kytäjä, so it is extremely important that the handicaps reflect the ability of the players as closely as possible.
There are a number of things that I like about the Annual Handicap Review process.
Most importantly the process treats all players all over Europe in the same way, this is inherently a fair process in that it is consistent in its treatment of all golfers and it is based purely on the scores of the players rather than on subjective assessments.
I believe that the handicap process needs a mechanism such as this to occasionally correct itself in order to cover cases where, for whatever reason, an individual's handicap does not reflect his standard of play. The rate of change for a handicap (especially upwards) is very gradual and without this mechanism it can take many tens of rounds before it self-adjusts to a change in a golfers ability level.
I also prefer this mechanism to leaving this purely in the hands of the handicap committee for discretionary changes as this mechanism does not rely on personal knowledge of the players concerned.
Having said all of that, I can also appreciate that a player's handicap can be a very personal thing to many players and the recent changes have been very irritiating and surprising to some of the impacted players at Kytäjä. One factor which has made this worse is that the Annual Handicap Review came "out of nowhere" this year. It had never been done before, there was no warning that it was about to happen and there was no explanation of how the results were calculated. This naturally made it rather difficult for people to comprehend when they got an automatically generated mail from golfbox informing that their handicap had changed.
I hope that this helped to shed some light on what happened and why in the Annual Handicap Review.
Andy