Transcripts - Episode 23: How Amateur Golf Should Actually Be Structured

The Birdie Board podcast is brought to you by the Birdie Board app, the easiest way to track matches, scores, and handicaps with friends. Now, here’s your host, Corey, with another episode of the Birdie Board podcast.

Welcome to episode 23 of the Birdie Board podcast.

So last week we did an episode about the most controversial rules in golf. And it turned out exactly what, how I thought it would. I make these podcasts into a lot of short videos, as probably some of you know. And the controversial topics definitely caused a lot of engagement, I’ll say, among the short videos that were created from it.

It’s interesting because, pardon me, I wanted that engagement because I want Birdie Board to be known. I want the brand to be known. So I saw a pretty significant uptick in the Birdie Board videos last week. But there’s a little bit of an interesting psychology side of it, like, why do controversial topics cause so much engagement? I think a lot of us probably know the answer to that. I’m not going to dive deeper into it on this episode, but I just thought that was interesting. Something to share is, like, the controversial topics turned out exactly like I thought they would.

Usually my videos get, I don’t know, maybe somewhere between 200 and 800 views per video depending on the platform. And I think every day, on at least one of the platforms, I had a video that got over 1,000, or over 2,000, or 3,000 views. I had a couple videos get up to 5,000. And just seeing that level of engagement was really interesting.

I think it’s probably also the algorithms. It’s interesting that the algorithms are promoting those types of videos even more. Maybe it speaks a little bit into our culture and what the culture values. But anyways, that’s interesting.

But onto this episode. For this episode, I wanted to talk about how I think amateur golf should be structured. So we did touch on this a little bit in the last episode, just talking about some of the controversial rules, and one of the things I talked about: should rules be different for amateurs versus PGA players? And I think the answer I settled on was no. If you listen back, I actually thought yes at first, but then I started talking about it, and I kind of convinced myself that it shouldn’t be.

So that’s more a matter of fact, like, should amateurs have different rules than pros? And as a matter of fact, I said no. But we talked about, through the episode, how maybe there are agreed upon rules ahead of time that amateurs should play with, but it’s all agreed upon ahead of time.

So the topic I want to talk about is just how amateur golf should be structured. And there’s four pillars I’m going to go through. The first is normalizing competition. The second is skill-based tee boxes. The third is stroke play and personal par. The fourth is competing, with how you’re going to be able to compete with friends without it getting weird. And the fifth is what I’m calling the amateur forgiveness framework.

So in this episode, we’re going to go through these five pillars or topics.

So the first thing I was really thinking about is normalizing competition. And what came to mind is that every other sport, even when played casually, there’s still competition involved. I’ve never played a game of pickup basketball where they’re like, “Oh, just keep score of how many…” or I’ve never played a game of pickup basketball where they’re like, “Just count how many baskets you make yourself,” or a game of pickup soccer, and they’re like, “Oh, just count how many goals you make yourself.” It’s always, now there’s teams in place, but there’s always competition, even when playing casually.

Or I’m thinking when I’m playing a game of basketball with my friend at the beach, we’re still playing 21. So if you haven’t heard of 21, it’s just a way to play basketball with, you know, two people when you don’t have teams. So we’re not just shooting around. Maybe we are just warm up, but like we do end up playing, and it’s casual and it’s fun, and there’s no hard feelings in the end. And I started thinking, like, why isn’t golf like that? Why don’t we always just compete in golf?

And golf gives us ways to do that even with different skill levels, which I’ll get into later. So I think having that competition will increase engagement, but also just make golf more fun.

I think it’s better for amateurs because it’s so easy to internalize the game of golf. And I’m sure a lot of people give up the game of golf because of how hard it is individually. But if you can figure out how to play competitively, and playing it with friends and against friends, that makes golf so much more fun in my opinion, and something I think I’m going to try to do even more.

I would say the majority of my rounds last year were quote casual rounds. But I don’t think casual and competitive should be mutually exclusive. I think you can do a casual round that is competitive, just like I can play a game of 21 in basketball, and it’d be competitive even though it’s just a casual beach round with friends.

And I think that game of basketball is kind of a good analogy because I’m not playing a full court basketball round. It’s modified rules, but it’s keeping it competitive in the end. And those modified rules are maybe something that we should take up in golf.

We’re not finishing that round of basketball saying, “Hey, we played it just like the pros, NBA championship,” but we’re still bragging and having fun saying, “Yeah, I beat my friend in a game of 21.” And no one illegitimizes that. They’re like, “Oh, nice. You beat him,” or like, “Oh, there’s no way.”

But why isn’t it like that in golf? It’s such a different mentality in golf. It’s like, “What did you shoot?” “Oh, I shot an 85,” or 90, or 95. It’s like, “Oh, great. I shot a 90, 95, whatever.” But it’s not like, “Oh, I beat you. You beat me,” sort of deal. It’s more so like, “Here’s my personal achievement.”

And there’s definitely an area of golf where you’re competing against yourself. But I don’t know if that should be the norm. And maybe that’s what I’m trying to advocate, is that maybe the norm should be the competition.

And that competition can be more friendly where you have really relaxed rules, or you’re playing a different game mode or something like that. Or you can play more serious, just like in basketball you can play full court games. In golf, you play a game without handicaps, or just straight up PGA rules or something like that.

I think that’s where the modification should come. But there should never be a modification to competitive play.

So I was thinking about, OK, what terminology do we use then? So we have competitive play. What if there is a round that we want to play like in basketball, where we’re just shooting around? Well, let’s call that just a practice round. And you see that in the pros. So it’s like, OK, they’re doing it. We do it.

So practice rounds with pros, they’re just playing every hole. Maybe they’re keeping score, some holes, some not. But by the end, they’re just practicing for that day. Why don’t we as amateurs do that? And honestly, we don’t need to do it every single week. Like, we’re amateurs. We don’t have the schedules to be able to allow us to do a practice round every single week.

But maybe once a month, we do a practice round where we’re not worrying about score. We just practice, redo shots, things like that. Maybe on the front nine you keep score, back nine you practice some different things. Why don’t we do that?

And then the other three weekends that you play in a round, or two weekends you play in a round, play competitive. There are so many ways that we can play competitive. It doesn’t mean you have to play competitive stressfully. It doesn’t mean you have to be competitive like the pros do. Like I said, it’s a game of basketball at 21. Just play with some rules that you and your friends agree on, and just keep it competitive. You’ll have more fun in the end.

So being able to normalize this competition, I think, is really important. But in order to normalize this competition, we need to get it all set up correctly, which brings us to pillar number two, which is skill-based tee boxes.

So historically tee boxes weren’t based on skill, and I think at a lot of courses they still aren’t. Historically tee boxes were based on your age. So you had your senior tees, your men’s tees, and then your back tees, or sometimes called tips for your pro golfers. So they are kind of skill-based, but they’re mostly age-based.

There was also a sexist element to it where you had your red tees, which were the women’s tees. But a lot of courses have moved away from that legacy way of determining tee boxes into a more modern approach that I absolutely love.

And I’m going to, I guarantee you guys listening, I’m going to live by this this upcoming golf season. Do not be afraid to play the forward tees. Amateurs are, I think, always playing further back than they should. I think your natural score should be closer to what the par is on the course. If you’re shooting 110, 120 off the white tees or the middle tees, move up. Like, you shouldn’t be shooting that high of a score because you’re just too far back. Move up two tee boxes, or whatever you can move up to until your natural score is, I don’t know, maybe in the 80s or something like that.

I don’t think there’s an actual number I would say, but it should be a lot lower. You shouldn’t be struggling through the course as an amateur.

There were several times last year that I played off the red tees. And even though I have the distance, and it’s not a brag, I’m not a long driver, probably somewhere between 220 and 250. If I get hold of it, I can get 280, but it’s too inconsistent for me to swing that hard.

If you’re thinking, OK, I drive 220 to 230 on a nice smooth drive. Let’s say most par fours are around 400. Well now I have a 170 yard shot in for my par fours off the middle tees. That’s not actually a normal approach shot for a par four. A normal approach shot should probably be somewhere between maybe 70 yards to 130 yards, 140 yards. So if you can’t get to that range off the tee box, you need to move up to a shorter tee box.

And I did that a few times last season and it was so much fun because I felt like I was playing the course more strategically rather than struggling through it and just hoping I can get into a manageable range.

Now if you play the right tee box, you will have a couple of par fours that are 450 and you’re going to have a longer approach shot, but you’re also going to have a couple of par fours that are 370 and you’re like, OK, I can get my drive to 50, 60 yards from the green and have a reasonable touchy chip shot, or a full 60 or something like that into the green. It gives you a lot more opportunities to shoot a normal round according to the course’s par.

So the tee boxes should be based off of skill. It just should be. I’m a firm believer of that. I’m going to play up more next season, even especially in the beginning of the season as I’m trying to get my footing again.

I’m not going to play off the back tees. I never hardly play off the back tees, to be honest, but I’m not playing off the middle. I’m going to play off the front. I’m not going to care what other people think. They think that I’m playing off ladies tees, so be it. That’s sexist. That’s not what it is anymore. It should be you’re playing off a skill level.

So now that we have kind of an idea here of, OK, we’re going to play competitive. It starts with setting up, starting on the right tee.

Now it’s talking about handicaps, and this is going to be a little bit of a longer segment because I want to talk about the details of how handicaps work, at least at a high level. I’ve had other episodes where I dig deeper into it, but I want to set the foundation for it again for this conversation.

So we’re on the right tee box. We’ve decided we want to play competitive play, but just moving up in the tee box isn’t going to be enough if you’re playing against a scratch golfer, for example, and you’re an amateur bogey-plus golfer, maybe 25, 30 handicap. Moving up in the tee box isn’t going to close that skill gap enough, and that’s where handicaps come in.

So a handicap is calculation. It’s not your average. It’s the best, I think it’s the best seven. I’m going to Google it real quick, see how. So it’s the best eight. It’s the best eight scores from your last 20 rounds, and it’s multiplied by .96. It’s not the most straightforward explanation, but it does show that it’s not simply just your average score.

And so you play 20 rounds of golf. It might sound like a lot, but there are quicker ways to calculate your handicap, or at least give you an estimate on your handicap before you get to a real one. But it’s your best eight rounds of golf averaged, multiplied by .96. So it is supposed to show your potential in golf. It’s like, here’s your top 40% scores. This is what you could really perform on a good day. So roughly it does say, you know, one out of every two, almost one out of every two rounds, is going to be closer to your handicap score than not.

So that’s what handicaps are.

Now there’s a further step because handicaps are more of a broad number to describe your skill. Well, we as golfers don’t play on the same conditions every single week like they do on a baseball diamond or a basketball court that don’t change their static fields. Well, I guess a baseball diamond can have different lengths, but football field and basketball are better examples. They don’t change. They’re static every single time they play.

But golf is different. And we have two numbers in golf that try to capture this difference. It’s a course rating and a slope rating.

A course rating is what a scratch golfer would typically shoot. So if the par on the course is 72 and the course rating is, let’s say, 75, that’s going to be a really, really difficult golf course for a scratch golfer because it’s three strokes above. So it’s saying the average golfer actually shoots above par. Conversely, the course could have a 69 course rating, which means the average scratch golfer actually shoots below par on this.

Now the slope rating is a different number, and it’s not based off of a score. It’s based off of a broader calculation, but it gives a number that’s supposed to be indicative of how hard is it for a bogey golfer.

So for example, a course that has really tight fairways might be easier for a scratch golfer relative to a bogey golfer. So the slope rating is supposed to describe how difficult a course is for a bogey golfer, which means a course could be a lot more difficult for a bogey golfer than it is for a scratch golfer.

So if we go back to that example of a fairway in line with trees, a pro is going to, or let’s say a scratch golfer is going to keep it in that fairway, I don’t know, 70% of the time or so. And if they’re in the trees, that’s going to be a tough chip-out shot.

But now if a bogey golfer is in the fairway, let’s say 30, 40%, that means 60, 70% of the time they’re shooting out of trees. That’s going to be a lot more detrimental to the bogey golfer score than what it would be to the scratch golfer score. So that’s what that slope rating is supposed to do, is calculate the difference.

And how does all this tie back into handicaps? Well, the formula takes your handicap into account. So it says, it’s a long formula. It multiplies some of the course rating by slope rating by handicap. And what you get in the end is how many strokes you receive on that course.

So let’s say your handicap is an 18. So you’re a bogey golfer. And the course rating and slope rating are accounted for, maybe it’s a little bit of a harder course. By the end, instead of 18 strokes, you get 20 strokes. What that means is you get a stroke on 18 of the holes, plus you get a stroke on the two hardest holes.

So you might have seen on scorecards before there’s a handicap number, handicap index sometimes it’s called, on each hole, one through 18. And what it is, is the course is saying number one is the hardest hole, number 18 is the easiest hole.

So if you get 18 strokes, or if you get 20 strokes, you get a stroke on every hole, and then you get two strokes spread out across the hardest holes. So with a 20, you get two extra strokes, you get one on the hardest hole and one on the second hardest hole.

That’s a lot of calculation just to equate a round. And that’s exactly what is needed though. It sounds complicated, but it’s a lot of years and years of mathematicians trying to figure out how can we better equate the game between two players, and that’s what they’ve come up with. It honestly works pretty well.

But with that complication, it’s not just something easy that can just be spun up real quick before a round. And that’s where, like, I’m going to make a plug, like an app like Birdie Board comes in. Because when you set up a round in Birdie Board, you can put in the course rating and the slope rating and the par. That’s done ahead of time. So now anyone who joins the match will automatically have their scores adjusted, and all that math is done behind the scenes. It saves a lot of time.

And whether you use Birdie Board or not, I hope you would use Birdie Board since this is the Birdie Board podcast, I would recommend that you do get some sort of app involved or something to help you calculate the score easier because it’s just going to be tough to do on the fly.

So that’s understanding stroke allocation.

And just a point to this is what this really is doing is redesigning what par is for you. So if you, let’s make it simple, and you get 18 strokes in a hole, and you get 18 after all the course and slope rating is adjusted and accounted for, so what that means is you get a stroke per hole.

What you mentally need to think, and this is really hard to do for some people, I know for example, my dad has a really hard time thinking of it in this sort of way, but your par is no longer the par on that scorecard.

If you get 18 strokes, your par, your net par, is now one stroke above the posted par. So if the par is a five, then your net par would actually be a six. And you should have, this is a hard part, you should have the same feeling that you do walking away from a hole if you got a net par as you do probably today with an actual par.

If we are playing this game right and using handicaps correctly, then a net par should feel like you got an actual par.

Same with birdie. You ended up getting a five on that hole and you got a stroke, so it’s a par six for you. You should walk away feeling like you got a birdie. It should be normal for you to tell people, “I got three birdies in a round.” And I think it should be normalized so that people accept that because that’s the point of handicap golf. That’s how we should be playing.

I don’t think everyone’s going to agree with me on that. That’s fine. I think that’s how we can continue to improve the game, especially for amateurs.

So to be able to keep the round competitive, we’ve moved ourselves up on the correct tee box. We’ve learned how to apply handicaps, which is really key, especially with big dispersion of skill level.

Now we’re going to talk about how do we compete with friends without it kind of getting weird, because it is going to be difficult at times to enforce rules.

And here’s a couple of things I would advise.

One, agree on the rules before tee off. That’s easiest to talk about. I know commonly rules that I play with some friends are like lift, clean, and place. We’ll play with gallery rule if we all agree on a shot. We will treat out of bounds as red stakes instead of white stakes, things like that. But as long as it’s agreed upon ahead of time, that helps make it a lot less weird, easier.

Try to make the enforcement strictly structural and not personal. That’s going to help a lot too. It’s tough because you need that trust with the person you’re playing against.

When I think back to that analogy with the game of 21, we all know what a foul is. We know what we can and cannot do. I would say it’s enforced 95% of the time. There’s always subjectiveness in the game of basketball with a thousand stuff. I think we all play when we’re playing a game of 21 with it not being personal. That’s what we need to really try to get to with the game of golf.

Lastly, I think everyone should just commit to it. If you’re playing with your friends and you just say, “Hey, we’re going to play with these rules,” just make sure everyone has buy-in. I don’t want to worry with a rule if someone’s not agreeing to it. Try to find a common solution.

Things you can talk about is like, do we confirm scores on every hole? I think that’s probably good, just a hole with some accountability. With Birdie Board, you can just look in the app to see what people got on the last hole. If you’re playing without Birdie Board, just confirming scores at the end of every hole is probably a good thing to do.

Define what sort of gimmes you’re going to get in a round, if any.

I think nowadays I hardly play with any gimmes or mulligans. Sometimes we’ll say, OK, you get a breakfast ball. That’s actually probably something I’ve done maybe once a month in the last season because sometimes you get to a course and it doesn’t have a warm-up area, or it only has a place you can hit into a net, or only a range with irons or something like that. Having two off the first tee box is usually helpful if you agree to it.

Clarifying out of bounds rules, winter rules.

And then max score, it should be clarified too. Especially with pace of play, I tend to do double par. Decide with your friends, should you do double net par? Should you do double par? Should you do no pickup?

When I do my yearly golf tournament, we do no pickup. You’re playing until the ball goes in the cup. But it’s all agreed upon ahead of time, and I think that’s the biggest thing you guys can do. It’s just agree upon the rules ahead of time to make sure that you all agree.

And it doesn’t have to be the same standards too. So if you’re playing with a really, really amateur golfer who you just know is going to lose shots on just about every hole, maybe you’re like, OK, we’re competing and I’ll let you have one mulligan a hole wherever you want to do it. But nothing more, so you have to decide where you want to use it. And that’s fine. That’s how you can make it competitive between you and a friend.

But I think we go back to all the way to that first pillar. I think it should be competitive between everyone.

Then the last pillar I have is the amateur forgiveness framework. So this is kind of going off of the last ones. It’s just framing that you’re not cheating if you agree to these rules ahead of time.

And there are different things you can do, like I talked about, which is changing the max score. That’s something you might want to do for amateur play. Like, should you have max double par, net par, whatever you want to do.

How should you treat out of bounds? Out of bounds stakes, as we talked about last week, can be really hard for an amateur golfer. So you might want to treat them as red stakes instead of true stroke and distance penalties.

Should you do lift, clean, and place? If you’re in the fairway in a divot, should you be able to get relief from that as an amateur? I think you should. Pro golf courses, they have people tending the fairways between holes and making sure there aren’t divots, and they’re really good at replacing divots and putting sand and stuff. We don’t get that luxury on public courses, and even country clubs.

Sometimes you’re not going to get that gallery rule. So this is an interesting one.

The gallery rule, if you haven’t heard about it, is in the PGA, golf balls are more rarely lost not just because of their skill level, but because they have hundreds of eyes looking for the golf balls. They actually have spotters on the holes to help them find it. So if you hit your golf ball and everyone sees it’s just up the right-hand side in the rough, and you’re walking around and you just can’t find it, you all can agree to a gallery rule, basically saying, “Hey, if we had a gallery, we would be able to find this ball.” Just drop it where you think it is and then play your next shot as if you found it.

I like the rule personally. I have friends who also like the rule. We tend to play with it if we all agree on it. I’ve never had a case where there’s been arguments around it. I definitely see how it could lead to arguments, that people disagree whether it’s a gallery rule or not, but it’s a good rule, I think, for amateurs to play with sometimes if it’s agreed upon beforehand.

And then another rule you could talk about, these are just ideas. There’s so many more rules you could discuss, but embedded ball rules. So if there’s an embedded ball anywhere on the course, even in areas that don’t typically give free relief, then you could go ahead and get that free relief and just prop it up. It’s kind of like a lift, clean, and place type of rule, but talking about these rules ahead of time will make it a lot easier during your competition.

So yeah, that’s this episode of the Birdie Board podcast.

I really like the idea of making golf more competitive and trying to not make competitive golf and relaxed golf mutually exclusive things. But I do think it’s possible to be competitive in golf and still play a relaxed friendly round. It shouldn’t be two separate things.

So I’m going to try to do it more this season with my friends, and I golf a lot with my dad, and just try to make that more normal. I’ll let you guys know how it’s going as we go into the season. There’s still snow outside where I’m at right now, so we still probably have a couple more weeks, three or four more weeks if that, before I actually get out and play. But I think this should be a really good thing. I’m excited about it.

So I think that’s it for the main topic.

Birdie Board, I’ve put out a couple more updates recently. You can now remove players from matches. So previously, if someone joined and let’s say they didn’t end up joining the round, or they couldn’t make it, you can actually remove that player from the match as long as the match hasn’t been started yet.

So as of right now, I advise you that if you’ve created a match in Birdie Board and you have everyone in it, don’t actually start the match until you get to the course, just in case you have a buddy who can’t show up, because then you could go in there, remove it, and not have to reset up the whole match. So I did that.

Another thing is at the end of a match, there are little medal emojis I put next to the leaderboards for individual stroke play. I didn’t count for ties. So I noticed in one of my test matches, I did that if there was like a tie for third place, only the first person listed would get that little bronze medal emoji. I fixed that, so now any ties will get both medal emojis. So just a little fun thing I did there.

If you haven’t downloaded yet, you can go to the App Store, download it for free. I have a super generous free tier right now. I’m just trying to get people to use the app. I’m making no money off of it right now, and that’s OK with me. I just want people to enjoy what I’ve built. I’m really excited about the golf season coming up and seeing the usage of this app and getting some feedback.

So that’s it for this episode of the Birdie Board Podcast. Thanks for listening, everyone.

Thanks for tuning in to the Birdie Board Podcast. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and share it with a friend who loves golf as much as you do. And before your next round, grab the Birdie Board app, free on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and let it handle the scoring while you enjoy the game.