Transcripts - Episode 24: Golf Rules and Scoring Most Friend Groups Misunderstand

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Now, here's your host, Corey, with another episode of the Birdie Board Podcast.

Welcome to episode 24 of the Birdie Board Podcast.

I only have one more until I reach my goal of 25 episodes. That's almost half a year of recording. I think technically I'll hit half a year when I hit 27 episodes because there was one week that I did two episodes, so just 26 isn't going to be enough.

So we're getting close to half a year of the Birdie Board Podcast, which is pretty exciting. But still, 24 episodes is a lot.

My wife was telling me there's a statistic, something like most podcasts don't go past three or four episodes. So the fact that we're on 24 now is something I'm pretty proud of.

Another big accomplishment that's on the horizon is 250 podcast downloads. We're at 235 currently, so I think we're going to be able to hit 250 in maybe the next podcast or two, depending on how lucky we get with the downloads.

So recently I had a Facebook video go a little bit viral. It had 70,000 views. That is a lot more than what I typically get on any of my videos, which can range anywhere between 200 views and 1,000 views, depending on the platform.

What was interesting to me is why I think this probably got some traction. It was about course rating and slope rating. And what's interesting about this topic is it's an area of golf that I think a lot of golfers don't understand.

And it's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think that's what draws people in and what makes them interested in it.

And I thought, well, let's talk about a lot of those types of topics on this podcast.

So in previous podcasts I've talked about course rating and slope rating already, so I'm not going to go over those. Maybe I'll bring it back up in a couple of podcasts from now.

But the first thing I'm going to talk about is score differential. And this is probably one of the newest things that I've learned recently.

And what is score differential?

Well, it's a number that is trying to tell you how you did on a course, regardless of the difficulty of it.

So to put that in another example, imagine you play two separate courses and you shot a 90 at both of those courses. Well, how do you know which one is actually the better 90 score?

That's where a score differential comes in.

And it's an equation that can tell you which one of those 90s is actually the better round. And it takes things like the course rating and the slope rating and puts it all into this formula and gives you a number.

And the lower that number is, the better you did on that round.

So if you put your 90s in and one course came back with a score differential of a 9, and the other course came back with a score differential of a 7, that second number, the 7, which is lower than a 9, means that is the better round.

It accounts for course conditions too if you wanted to, which we'll talk about in a second.

But the formula is this.

Your gross score, so the actual score you get, minus the course rating, and then you multiply that by 113 divided by the slope rating.

This is going to give you your score differential for that particular course and a number that you can use to compare all of your rounds to see which round that you played best.

I talked about a really cool mechanic of this formula, which is how you can adjust your score based off of the condition.

So imagine if you're playing the same course two days in a row and shot 85 and 85. Let's say you shot 85 both days.

And one day it was perfect conditions. It was sunny, nothing wrong.

The next day was a torrential downpour and windy.

Well obviously we're trying to figure out which one did you shoot better at.

If you shot 85 on both days and the second day was rainy and windy, it's probably pretty easy to think you played better on that day to be able to shoot 85 in those conditions.

But this score differential formula, as I spoke about earlier, wouldn't account for that.

So how would you account for that?

Well, you can optionally add what's called a Playing Conditions Calculation. It's PCC.

It's a score from minus one to three that you can add or subtract from your adjusted gross score.

So for that 85 that you shot with the rainy conditions and the windy conditions, depending on how bad you assess it to be, don't put 85 into this formula. Instead put 87 or 88.

Use this Playing Conditions Calculation to adjust your score ever so slightly to account for these different conditions.

I mentioned it starts at negative one.

A scenario I thought about is why you would use a minus one.

Well, I'm thinking I was playing the course one time and our tee boxes that we were teeing off from had— it was just one of those big tee boxes— and there were foxes on the tee box.

Well, we were kind of standing there waiting for them to move off and they just weren't moving.

So we didn't really want to go close because you never know.

So what we did is we kind of went up in front of the tee box to the foot of the fairway and we just teed off from there.

Well, this is where I might want to subtract a stroke because I made that hole easier.

So if I shot 85 that day and then I went back the next day and shot another 85 but it was from the normal tee box, you would want your score differential to account for that.

So that's where this PCC, the Playing Conditions Calculation, comes into effect.

If you're playing somewhere official or maybe a course might give you the PCC for the day, definitely take note of that.

Otherwise you can kind of do your best guess and come up with it yourself.

The reason these score differentials are very important is because it plays into the handicap index.

And I will say this is something I got wrong in a previous podcast.

What I said that was wrong was your handicap is the average of your lowest eight rounds.

That is not true.

What it actually is is the average of your eight lowest score differentials from your last 20 rounds.

So the difference is that I said it was the eight lowest rounds. It's not that.

It's the eight lowest score differentials, which is that equation we just talked about in the last section of this podcast.

So once you know all your score differentials for the last 20 rounds, now you can take the top eight and average those together.

And what you get in the end is a handicap index.

And this handicap index is supposed to tell you how good a golfer is from a potential point of view.

It's not trying to capture how good they are from an average point of view.

It's trying to say this is the golfer's potential. This is how good they could be when they're playing really, really well.

Now this is not like— I would say this is just a little bit better than the average. It's the eight lowest.

So it's eight divided by 20. That's not quite 50%.

So that kind of gives you an idea of what really is it. It's about your top 40%.

So if you're trying to figure out, well, how often should I shoot my average handicap, it's probably roughly around 40% of the time you should shoot it.

So it's not like every other time you play out, but if you play five rounds, roughly two of them should be near your handicap index. And then the other three might not.

So it's not uncommon for a 10 handicapper to constantly shoot in the high 80s to 90s.

Even though a 10 handicap on a par 72 would say your potential is an 82.

Well you might only shoot close to an 82 two out of five rounds.

The other three rounds are going to be 85, 87, maybe even 90.

And that's okay.

That's the point of a handicap index.

It's not trying to measure your average. It's trying to measure your potential.

Very important part.

And it's all based off of your score differentials.

So that is the understanding of a handicap index.

Understand that's based off of that score differential that we talked about in the last section.

So now that you have your handicap index, how do you use it?

Well your handicap index is a number.

And what it's trying to tell you is how many strokes you get on the hardest holes on the golf course.

The easiest way to think about it is if you have an 18 handicap, you get one additional stroke on every hole.

If you have a nine, you get an additional stroke on just the nine hardest holes.

So a lot of times what golfers assume— believe it or not— and it's okay if it's you, is they assume the number one hardest hole is going to be the first one you play and the last one you play is going to be the easiest and it just gets easier as the day goes on.

That's not true.

There is what's called a stroke index.

Sometimes it's called a handicap index on the scorecard.

There's another number on your scorecard that's not the order of the holes. It goes from one to 18.

And what this is telling you is how difficult the hole you're about to play is.

18 is going to be the easiest hole.

1 is going to be the hardest.

And when you get let's say 10 strokes on a particular course depending on your handicap, what it's saying is you get 10 strokes on the 10 hardest holes.

So one through 10, your par would be one higher than what's actually on the scorecard.

If you have a handicap over 18, what that means is you get a stroke on every hole and then you get another stroke on the two hardest holes.

So you would actually get two strokes on the two hardest holes and one on all the rest.

If you have the opposite handicap, so you have a plus handicap, let's say you're plus two, the opposite actually happens.

You actually lose strokes on the easiest holes.

So if you have a two handicap and the calculations say you get two less strokes on the 18th and 17th hole, you actually have a par one below what's listed.

So if the 18th hole is a par four, your new par would actually be a par three.

So you can see how all of these systems are working together to pull golfers of different skill levels down to about par so that they can have a competitive game.

And with the potential of it, it shows if it was your average then the competitiveness wouldn't mean as much.

The cool thing about golf potential is it doesn't say when your best rounds have to occur.

You can do the math and say okay about 40% of the time I'm going to have a good round.

Well in a way, if you've had five bad rounds in a row you're due for one, or you could be resetting your handicap.

But what it's saying is if I'm a 15 handicap, that is my potential.

I need to lock in and shoot my handicap at 15.

I'm going to course strategize. I'm really going to think about each hole.

That's what I need to get.

That's what makes golf so competitive.

It's still in your control to shoot your potential.

And this is something Tiger was so good at and Scottie is so good at.

They shoot their potential when it matters the most.

Both Tiger and Scottie have had bad rounds throughout their careers.

But it seems like when majors roll around, that's when they're shooting their potential.

That's what you want to do with your handicap.

When it matters most, live up to your potential.

Live up to your handicap.

Shoot that number.

And you're going to win every time.

So transitioning away now from the whole handicap system.

The next topic here is ready golf.

The traditional ordering of how you play is the winner of the previous hole is the one who tees off first.

And then you go in the order of whoever got second, third, and so on.

Once you're off the tee box, the person that is furthest out is the one to go first.

That is the traditional golf order.

So what happened is this would cause pace-of-play problems.

Someone in the middle of the fairway pretty far out would be waiting for someone looking for their ball when they could have already gone.

So this is where ready golf came in.

The concept is just to help pace of play.

What ready golf says is if it's safe to do so, go ahead and play your next shot.

In general, most people play ready golf now.

But if you're actually being affected by slow play, I would encourage you to jump back to traditional ordering just to slow yourselves down a little bit.

You have time.

You have no reason to hit up on the people in front of you.

You can take that time to play more traditional golf.

The next topic here is net score versus gross score.

The gross score is the actual score you recorded on a hole.

This is the one you wrote down on the scorecard.

If you swung the club six times, you put a six down.

This is what PGA players play with.

A net score is your gross score adjusted by your handicap.

Going back to our easy example, if you get 18 strokes that means you get a stroke on every hole.

If you got a five on a hole, your net score would be a four on that hole.

You can also say net score is based off of the word for the hole.

So if the par was a par five and you got a net four, you got a net birdie, which is pretty cool.

An easy way to remember which is which is if you have any financial background.

If you get a paycheck, you'll see a gross amount and then taxes and deductions get taken out and you receive the net amount.

Gross is the big number before deductions.

Net is the final number after adjustments.

Another way to remember it is gross is usually the higher number.

Gross feels worse.

Net feels better.

And then the last one we have to go over in this episode is the maximum score you would record for handicap purposes.

What this is saying is there is a score you would no longer record higher than.

And what that is is a net double bogey.

You take the strokes you get on a hole, add two, and that would be your maximum for that hole.

So if it's a par four and you get a stroke on it, your par would be a five.

You add two to that and it would technically be a seven.

That is the maximum score for handicap purposes.

Now that's not saying you pick up at seven.

What that's saying is when you put your number in for calculating your score differential, you wouldn't put a number higher than your net double bogey.

The purpose of this rule is to stop inflated handicap numbers.

Someone can't just score a 30 on the last hole to raise their handicap.

This prevents that.

Now whether or not you pick up depends on the type of match you're playing.

If you're playing competitively and your buddy already beat you, I would encourage you to finish it out if you can.

But if pace of play is important or you just need a break, you can probably pick up at net double bogey.

The official rule for handicap purposes is net double bogey.

And that's it for this episode.

I think the game of golf is really cool.

I've been playing for probably close to 20 years in some capacity.

And I'm still learning a lot about the game of golf.

Not only from an athletic point of view, but just from the knowledge of the sport.

It feels like I'm constantly learning things about the game of golf, which is really cool.

So that's it.

That's what I wanted to go over for this episode of the Birdie Board Podcast.

Thanks for listening, everyone.

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