Question:
Where’s Martha Burk when you need her? Note that "around here" is not the barbaric, uncouth, louts from the United States who oppress women golfers as the USAGE Handicap Manual, Section 9.3 (http://www.usga.org/handicap/manual/2002_Manual/index.html ) says "In mixed competitions where each player plays his own ball and where allocations are different for men and women, the players receive strokes based on their respective stroke allocations."
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Around here we play many courses where par differes for gender tees – at the start of the play you must establish whose card you play off = usually off the men’s card regardless of associate’s card.
Response:
The assigned par has nothing to do with it. Whoever score the lower has the better ball score. In your case, one scored a 5 and the other scored 4. How would the scores be different if it had been done on another hole?
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Howdy Quick question. If you are playing in a 4BBB stroke comp with an associate, what happens on a hole where it is par 5 for associates and par 4 for men? If the associate has a 6 a 5 which is a net par how is that taken into account when comparing to 2 men where one has a net par 4? Both pairs have had a net par but one gets to record 4 while the other gets to record 5. Or is that just tough luck? Tony
Response:
Around here we play many courses where par differes for gender tees – at the start of the play you must establish whose card you play off = usually off the men’s card regardless of associate’s card.
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Howdy Quick question. If you are playing in a 4BBB stroke comp with an associate, what happens on a hole where it is par 5 for associates and par 4 for men? If the associate has a 6 a 5 which is a net par how is that taken into account when comparing to 2 men where one has a net par 4? Both pairs have had a net par but one gets to record 4 while the other gets to record 5. Or is that just tough luck? Tony
Response:
I don’t know whether there really was a ‘ban’.
I seem to remember when I was on the Trentham Committee, a formal letter appearing from the AGU and WGA advising clubs against running such events. Maybe at the time it was more like the Rules version of "shouldn’t", but it did seem to point towards a future governing body ban. It caused a great deal of consternation, because heaps of clubs like Trentham run mixed fields, especially mid-week. Our entire summer competition is mixed. I just don’t think they realised the extent of mixed competition in rural areas. I don’t know that any club actually stopped running their mixed competitions, but the reaction was one of bewilderment tinged with a degree of anger that their competitions might be eliminated in favour of the integrity of the Rules and Handicap system. Of course, maybe a lot of the problem would be solved by having one handicapping system off the various coloured tees? — Cheers Colin Wilson RSG Roll Call: http://rec-sport-golf.com/members/?rollcall=wilsonc Trentham Golf Club: http://www.trenthamgolf.com
Response:
You guys need a Martha Burk as the USGA has documented mixed handicap allocations in Section 9.3 of the Handicap System Manual at http://www.usga.org/handicap/manual/2002_Manual/index.html Stableford is just a way of keeping score so it doesn’t change the problem.
Our problem is that our tees are divided into Men’s (White) and Women’s (Red), and the two are rated by different governing bodies! For instance my course’s red tees are rated for women by WGA at 71 (par 71), while the whites are rated for men by the AGU at 68 (par 70). The mixed competitions *are* somewhat adjusted for fairness because the women’s handicaps are determined off their red tees, while the men’s are determined off their white tees. However the women’s handicapping system is different to the men’s system to begin with, so there will never be total "comparativeness". A woman’s 20 handicap is neither directly comparable to a men’s 20 handicap when both are playing off the reds (which they never do in competition anyway) nor when the women play off the reds and the men play off the whites. I like the USGA idea of rating the course according to the tees on a "unisex" basis, and being able to add or subtract strokes from your handicap according to whether you are playing the forward or back tees. That would give total equity in mixed competitions, something that our divided system sadly lacks. — Cheers Colin Wilson RSG Roll Call: http://rec-sport-golf.com/members/?rollcall=wilsonc Trentham Golf Club: http://www.trenthamgolf.com
Response:
You guys need a Martha Burk as the USGA has documented mixed handicap allocations in Section 9.3 of the Handicap System Manual at http://www.usga.org/handicap/manual/2002_Manual/index.html Stableford is just a way of keeping score so it doesn’t change the problem.
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Or is that just tough luck? Tough luck I guess. Colin has reported elsewhere a governing body ‘ban’ on these type of events, but I don’t know whether there really was a ‘ban’. The current Victorian Golf Association view on mixed 4bbb events is ‘try to avoid them’, or stick to stableford format. I know the VGA and WGV will refuse to consider any ‘ruling’ requests on this form of play! cheers david
Response:
Or is that just tough luck?
Tough luck I guess. Colin has reported elsewhere a governing body ‘ban’ on these type of events, but I don’t know whether there really was a ‘ban’. The current Victorian Golf Association view on mixed 4bbb events is ‘try to avoid them’, or stick to stableford format. I know the VGA and WGV will refuse to consider any ‘ruling’ requests on this form of play! cheers david
Response:
thanks Colin. Crikey!! I’m trying to work out the implications of some females (including my wife) who have joined our work social golf club. So far we have worked out we need to avoid putting the eagle’s nest approach on a hole with different pars for men/ladies to avoid confusion as to whether they have to hit it in 2 or 3 strokes. I was thinking that single stroke events would be a no brainer – we would just use how many under your gender’s par your net score is rather than the raw net score to adjudicate the winner. But now based on what you are saying I’m not sure whether to even suggest that. We like to have a mixture of types of events that get played so just using stableford all the time isn’t an option. It all gets very complicated! Bloody women 
The only up side of having my wife join is that I get to have a few beers after and she can drive home Thanks for info. Tony
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – So are you suggesting that in a single stroke event with both men and associates playing that I would win with a net 66 over a ladie with a net 67 even if the par is 72 (men) vs 74 (ladies) i.e I’m -6 and she is -7 Unfortunately yes.
Response:
Crikey!! I’m trying to work out the implications of some females (including my wife) who have joined our work social golf club.
I don’t see a problem with deciding a pure singles stroke result however you like. If you want to institute a system where the winner is the most under par, thus adjusting for women, then do so. Just put it in the "Conditions of Competition" as to how a winner is determined. The problem comes when you have the 4BBB Stroke format. That’s why Par or Stableford solve the problem, but like you said, it can be a bit boring playing them all the time. One of the other minor problems is how to calculate CCRs and suchlike where there’s a mixed field (the AGU answer I believe is that the women must be left out of the men’s calculations). I think the last discussion we had on this was complicated further by the idea of *mixed match play* … who wins a hole when the par is 5 for women and 4 for men? That was another that the Rules of Golf doesn’t seem to contemplate. The answer is that scratch match play is always off the stick regardless of par, and handicap matchplay is still best net, again regardless of par. — Cheers Colin Wilson RSG Roll Call: http://rec-sport-golf.com/members/?rollcall=wilsonc Trentham Golf Club: http://www.trenthamgolf.com
Response:
So are you suggesting that in a single stroke event with both men and associates playing that I would win with a net 66 over a ladie with a net 67 even if the par is 72 (men) vs 74 (ladies) i.e I’m -6 and she is -7
Unfortunately yes. My club plays mixed events every Thursday, and the net score always wins, *regardless of par* (the men’s par is 70, the women’s 71). As an aside, a couple of years ago there was a ruckus here because the AGU (Australian Golf Union) and WGA (Womens Golf Australia) put out a directive prohibiting such mixed events for the very reason you are raising, plus the differences in the systems by which men’s and women’s handicaps were calculated. Plenty of rural clubs, where there were regular small mixed fields mid-week, railed against the "ban", and bluntly told the AGU/WGV that their decision would ruin country golf. Some of them saw the threat of intra-club splits between men and women, and it would most likely have meant that the women would not get to play at all because two or three was not enough for their own competition. So the clubs kept playing mixed events regardless. The AGU/WGA relented, mainly because the WGA saw the negative effect it would have on women golfers in small rural communities. There are few enough of them as it is without their own organising body turning them away from the game. — Cheers Colin Wilson RSG Roll Call: http://rec-sport-golf.com/members/?rollcall=wilsonc Trentham Golf Club: http://www.trenthamgolf.com
Response:
Howdy Quick question. If you are playing in a 4BBB stroke comp with an associate, what happens on a hole where it is par 5 for associates and par 4 for men? If the associate has a 6 a 5 which is a net par how is that taken into account when comparing to 2 men where one has a net par 4? Both pairs have had a net par but one gets to record 4 while the other gets to record 5. Or is that just tough luck? Tony
Response:
Both pairs have had a net par but one gets to record 4 while the other gets to record 5. Or is that just tough luck?
It’s tough luck. I think this was discussed here some time ago. The concept is that the Rules of Golf don’t contemplate the *gross* par being different for different players in the *same* event. It’s off the stick, minus strokes given, that matters. Probably that’s why most events I’ve ever come across, where men and women are mixed, are 4BBB Stableford or similar. — Cheers Colin Wilson RSG Roll Call: http://rec-sport-golf.com/members/?rollcall=wilsonc Trentham Golf Club: http://www.trenthamgolf.com
Response:
thanks Colin. So are you suggesting that in a single stroke event with both men and associates playing that I would win with a net 66 over a ladie with a net 67 even if the par is 72 (men) vs 74 (ladies) i.e I’m -6 and she is -7 Tony
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Both pairs have had a net par but one gets to record 4 while the other gets to record 5. Or is that just tough luck? It’s tough luck. I think this was discussed here some time ago. The concept is that the Rules of Golf don’t contemplate the *gross* par being different for different players in the *same* event. It’s off the stick, minus strokes given, that matters. Probably that’s why most events I’ve ever come across, where men and women are mixed, are 4BBB Stableford or similar. — Cheers Colin Wilson RSG Roll Call: http://rec-sport-golf.com/members/?rollcall=wilsonc Trentham Golf Club: http://www.trenthamgolf.com