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All posts by Duane Bender - 5. page

Skins Game Tee Choices

Slight modification to the skins game tee choices available to players: Anyone can play from the blues, blue/whites, whites, or white/golds, as stated last week. But we will now allow older, higher handicap golfers to play from the golds if they meet the rule of 83–age 65 or older, and age plus white-tee course handicap of 83 or more.

There may be a few players who formerly met the rule of 83 criterion but now will not, due to the reduced handicaps under the World Handicap System. But I think those players who were borderline-qualified before should be able to handle the new white/gold combo tees. So for now, 83 it is.

Skins Game | Duane Bender |

Skins Game Changes

I have updated the Skins Game description on the website. Here’s a list of changes:

  • Players may play from the blue, blue/white, white, or white/gold combo tees. Older players with higher handicaps may also choose to play from the gold tees. (Age + white tee course handicap >= 83.)
  • Players are encouraged to pick up if they cannot score better than net double bogey.
  • Players with handicaps greater than 18 will receive their full handicap strokes in the team game, but still will not get more than one stroke for skins purposes.*

* Let’s say your team has 4 players, 3 of whom are 1-18 handicaps and 1 who is a 20. On hole #4, everyone makes par. Your team score for the hole is -4, because the 20 handicap gets 2 strokes. But when you call out the score for the skins run-through, you say “5 for 4”, not “5 for 3”. To avoid confusion, it might help to mark your scorecard as shown in the video at the end of the Skins Game description on the website.

Skins Game | Duane Bender |

New Tees, New Courses

The new blue/white and white/gold combo tees are now available for posting in the My Handicap app on our website. And you will now see your course handicap displayed on that page from all six tee sets, including those combo tees.

Also, we added new courses from throughout the local area: Vidanta, Flamingos, Vista Vallarta, Marina Vallarta, Litibu, and Punta Mita. So you can now post scores from a total of 10 local courses!

I got the information from the courses’ own websites where I could, but some don’t have their scorecards online. For those I found another online source, but I’m a little concerned about their accuracy, so I’m asking a favor: If you play at any of these local courses, please bring back a scorecard and give it to me, or if you prefer, just take a photo of it and email that to me at duane.bender@gmail.com. Thanks.

General | Duane Bender |

WHS Handicaps Now Live

Gerard Gregoire has made the changes to our My Handicap and Live Scoring apps required by the new World Handicap System. The first thing you will notice about My Handicap is the wide range of course handicaps you’ll have for our 6 tee sets. And what will be most alarming for some is how low their handicaps are from the forward tees. Let’s look at why this is.

In the past, the USGA defined course handicap as the number of strokes a player needs to play down to the course rating. So under that system, “playing to your handicap” meant shooting a net score of 67-68 from the golds, 69-70 from the whites, etc. Under the WHS, course handicap has been redefined as the number of strokes a player needs to play down to par. So now playing to your handicap (from any tees at El Tigre) means shooting a net score of 72. Obviously it takes fewer handicap strokes to get your net score down to 72 than to 68.

Your main concern about handicaps should be the number of strokes you give or receive in a game against an opponent. If you and your opponent are on the same tees, the decreased handicaps don’t make any difference because your handicaps were decreased by the same amount. And if you’re playing against a player on a different set of tees, you will no longer have to adjust your handicap by the difference in course ratings as we did before, because your WHS handicap has already been adjusted. So let’s say that 15.0 index player plays from the golds against a 12.0 index playing from the whites. Under the old system, the gold tee player had a 15 course handicap from the golds, and the white tee player had a 13 course handicap from the whites. After adjusting for the 2.2 stroke difference in course ratings, they play even. Under WHS, the white tee player is an 11 and the gold tee player is an 11, so they still play even.

Gerard and I tested the system yesterday, and we think we ironed out all the kinks, but if something doesn’t seem right to you, please send us an email describing what you saw to duane.bender@gmail.com and gerard.gregoire@conseilslg.com.

As you know, when you post a score, you enter your Adjusted Gross Score, after reducing any excessively high hole scores to the maximum allowed for handicap purposes. One of the WHS changes, as I explained in a previous post, is to that maximum hole score. Under the old rules, a 10-19 handicap could take a 7, a 20-29 handicap could take an 8, and so on. Under WHS, everyone can take a net double bogey. This will become second-nature to you soon, but initially you may have to think about it. It is the sum of three numbers: Par for the hole, 2, and strokes you receive on the hole. Or another way to think of it is double bogey plus handicap strokes. You know that a double bogey on a par 4 is 6. If you get 2 strokes on a par 4, your maximum score would be 8. Here’s a chart that shows all the possibilities:

Maximum Hole Scores

As I said above, Gerard has updated the Live Scoring app, and it will automatically post an Adjusted Gross Score into the handicap system for you.

General | Duane Bender |

New Combo Tees

Note: This post has been edited to update the White/Gold combos to the latest version.

Our Director of Golf, Steve Johnson, has developed two new sets of tees for men to use here at El Tigre. They are the Blue/White Combos and the White/Gold Combos. When we update the My Handicap app this Saturday, you will be able to post from both these new tee sets, and the system will calculate and display your course handicaps from them. Here are the scorecards:

General | Duane Bender |

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