The presentation night is this Saturday.
New member Alec Dietsch came to the Highlands 6 years ago and joined the club last month
The stroke index gives the order of holes at which handicap strokes awarded should be taken. A group comprising, John Mulholland ,Don Barker, Haille Smith, David Boyd, Brian Hanrahan.
& Peter Keys and chaired by Don has come back with a recommendation. In asking the group to look at a new index I wrote to Don :- "A new index must be arrived at in a transparent fashion and be defendable. We need to have an index that satisfies the rules, the guidelines, and the spirit. A new index will by necessity be a compromise."
This is the groups recommendation. Don has written
"The recommendation is based on;-
Golf Aust reference to balancing each nine - odds then evens
Statistics related to two representive groups of golfers over the full calander year 2012.
Group A being the 25 % of playing members with the lowest handicaps. 0 - 19 . average 9.5 ( 39 players )
Group B being players 15 to 20 strokes higher than group A. ie H'cap range 25 - 30 average 27.5( 42 players )
These groups comprise half of all playing members who retiurned some 2500 cards.
The computer generated a stroke index for each group.
This was then balanced for each group by mechanically allocating
index 1 -front 9
index 2 back nine
index 3 front nine and so on in order.to 18.
When balanced, there is an appreciable difference between the two groups on some holes - eg hole 15 is index 14 for lower markers but 8 (8+18=26) for higher markers
Therefore we strongly recommend indexing to 36 as a single index would involve personal judgement, unnecessary compromise,or disregard the needs of one or other group
After testing the stroke index generated by the above process, against the judgement of each committee member,It was decided that further review was unnecessary and would simply introduce an element of " opinion " and very minor changes wihich would be of little consequence."
The recommendation is in the table below and I invite comment. I am sure that there will be differences in opinion and all opinions will be considered opinions and hence will be treated with equal weight.
My thanks to the group to preparing and putting forward this new index.
Please bring up any matters to do with golf, dates for fixtures etc or the course with me - that's what the Captain is here for. Email is preferred and I'm also at the club during the day - morning is best.
all the best
Kevin