How strong of a correlation would you say there is between the average number of a birdies a player makes, and their handicap?

[[And, before we discuss this further, (if anyone's interested), let me explain something to some people who don't understand the concept of correlation.

A statistical correlation does not mean a direct 1 to 1 deterministic relationship.

If I make the statement that IQ and wage are positively correlated, you don't disprove it by citing one person you know that's a zillionaire and has an IQ of 50. (Shawn Kemp.) Or, that you know some lazy slacker with an IQ of 200 that lives in his parents basement and plays video games all day to earn nothing. ]]


What would be the average handicap for people who average
1 birdie per round..
2 birdies per round..
3 birdies per round..
?

There is obviously a very strong positive correlation but don't forget that the # of birdies will also be affected by the variance/standard deviation of one's play. For example, I'm about a 15 handicap but I would say that I get way more birdies than the average 15 handicap since my game is fairly high variance (I have the potential to make really good shots but am not very consistent)

amongst good players it's probably pretty good...

amongst intermediate players it's probably not so good.

i think the difference between 5 handicaps and 15-20 handicaps relates more to frequency of terrible shots than frequency of great shots. i know a fair number of people who can par (i realize you asked about birdies) 3 or 4 holes in a row and then completely blow-up on a hole or two (like hitting 5 off a tee)

This describes me almost perfectly. Very frustrating.

I would think the lower the handicap the stronger the correlation.

Definitely true that there is no deterministic relationship. I think I make fewer birdies than most people at my handicap level - I don't make putts but I also hit fewer awful shots and take very few penalties.

I average around a 6 handicap - I would average "maybe" 1 birdie per round. Some rounds could be 4 or 5 birdies in the round and then I may go a month without a birdie

This / Lag style in poker etc

6 handicap and 1 birdie per round...month without birdie...head explude

Overall, the better the golfer, the more birdie chances they will put themselves in = more birdies.

That is just the average trend, though. There could be quite a few 5 handicappers that don't hit it very far, but always hit it around the green and have a decent short game. Then there could be a 15 handicapper that bombs it half the time and hits it to 20 feet for birdie and the other half goes in the woods and slaps around for awhile. The 15 handicapper could very well average more birdies than the old man carrying the 5.

Take 100 people that average 3 birdies a round. 95% of the players will have a handicap better than ____________.

2

3 birdies a round sounds like a lot to me.

Going by the PGA tour birdie percentage about 95% of them make 3 birdies a round, but I think only 40 guys average more than 4. Of course if those guys were playing on my home course with with 490 yard par 5's and pins near the middle of the greens they would average a lot more than 3, so I guess course and context matter.

Edit: I misread that, I was thinking what handicap do 95% of the people average at least 3 birdies a round.

If it's the the handicap where the 95th percentile of people averaging 3 birdies a round are at I would guess at least 5% of these birdie machines are 6 or 7 handicaps with easy home courses

Interesting question. I think the thing that affect handicap the most is double-bogeys and worse. Good players and tour players will have a varied mix of birdies/pars/bogeys, with the main difference being the frequency of double-bogeys. Then when talking about mid to high handicappers obviously they will have a lot more doubles and triples and even worse. My father-in-law is a 1.7 but I've noticed he doesn't get many birdies. Seems like he pars everything and then has a small handful of bogeys. He's a very good, very consistent ball-striker but I've noticed he's not great at putting. If he was a lot better at putting that's probably where he'd pick up birdies, but I don't know that I've seen him double-bogey a hole yet.

I'm a 3.8 handicap and in the last 20 rounds my birdie/round average is 1.65. The most I've had in a round in the last 20 is 5 once, twice with 4, and three times with 3 birdies. Seven rounds had zero.

Some other stats in case anyone was curious.

Fairway % hit: 52.1%
Greens in Regulation: 51.4%
GIR Putting avg: 1.96
GIR Birdie Conversion Rate: 17.8%
Putts/Round: 31.7
3 Putts per round: 1.30
Scoring average is +7.72 to the course rating and 78.9 raw score.

Par 3 GIR %: 42.5%
Par 4 GIR %: 49.5%
Par 5 GIR %: 65.0%

Those stats above are all for the last 20 rounds. For the top ten rounds that generate my handicap the stats are...

Birdies per round: 2.60
Fairway % hit: 55.0%
Greens in Regulation: 60.0%
GIR Putting avg: 1.89
GIR Birdie Conversion Rate: 24.1%
Putts/Round: 30.7
3 Putts per round: 1.10
Scoring average is +4.25 to the course rating and 75.1 raw score.

Par 3 GIR %: 42.5% with a scoring average of 3.43
Par 4 GIR %: 59.0% with a scoring average of 4.18
Par 5 GIR %: 80.0% with a scoring average of 4.90

Thanks for posting Palo, do you keep stats on up and downs / sand saves?

I don't keep up/downs directly. I do track green side bunker results.

I average 1.6 sand bunkers per round, my save % is 18.8%, and the average distance from the hole after the bunker shot is 22.8 feet. The bunkers on the two courses I usually play are not easy. They are not consistent at all with some having sand and others having only the illusion of sand with dirt about an 1/8th of an inch under the ball. When I dig into my stance the sand under my feet often bears no relation to the quality of the sand where the ball is. Of course, my Dad is quite good out of the same bunkers and probably averages getting the ball inside 10 feet so I guess I just suck and my main bunker strategy is to avoid them.

I do have my distance to the hole on the green broken down between when it's a green in regulation and when I get on the green not in regulation along with putting stats for each. When I get on the green in regulation the average distance to the hole is 22.7 feet with a 1.96 putting average. When I get on the green not in regulation the average distance is 10.1 feet with a putting average of 1.55. Measurements are just stepped off and estimated as I survey my putt and figure out what I want to do and not measured accurately with any device.

During the round I note down the following information after each hole. If I hit the fairway I put a tiny "F" in a box, if I hit the green I put a "G", greenside sand bunker gets an "S", starting distance to hole on the green with how many putts, and finally the distance to the hole on the final made putt. If I screw up the bunker shot and don't even get it on the green then I put a second distance figure in the box and circle it to make clear it wasn't on the green. You can get all kinds of stats just with this info. I also track penalty shots with an "OB", "W", "LB", or "UP" or whatever to designate my epic failure. I can safely say I have way too many penalty shots considering the courses I play have slopes only around 120.

Handicap is a dumb measure of someone's skill, too. Scoring average is the only thing that should be taken into account and graded on the rating/slope. My scoring average was 75.4 for last year and my handicap ended at 0.8. Since handicap only counts your best 10 rounds of your last 20, you could have a scratch golfer with a scoring average of 81 if he shot 10 72's and 10 90's. And in the club tourney he'd finish middle of the pack in the long run. So handicap can be misleading when applied to high variance players.

I don't even feel that good of a player when I'm on my A game. I can shoot 80 any given day pretty much. Or I can shoot a couple under. So playing in tourneys with handicaps especially sucks for LAGs like me.

I don't really get your point tzwien, handicap measures handicap, and nothing more. If you understand the way a handicap is calculated (I know *you* do, I am speaking generally), it is useful information about a player. I don't think it is any more or less relevant than scoring average when trying to determine someone's "skill", it is just another metric.

Tournaments with any form of adjustment are all basically masturbatory exercises, anything that takes away from the main scoring mechanism of the game (who shot the lowest score) and attempts to use a different metric to determine winner (adjusted score) is obviously going to be flawed in some way. It's pretty clearly just for fun, anyone who goes into one thinking otherwise should get real.

I guess I just have a beef with handicap being the main measure of someone's skill. Yeah, scoring average is just another way to measure, but it's obviously the clearest indicator of how good someone is.

For example, when I ask someone how good they are at cash games, I don't want them to give me their winrate of their 10 best sessions of their last 20. Their 10 best might be really good, but their bad might be so destructive that it makes them a huge loser. I look at golf in a similar way. I want to know the true winrate of someone's golf game. Not some pick-and-choose-your-best BS.

I know you're still relatively new to the game, and with your specific personal background thus far (lolgambling!), I can see how you could maintain your view on this. But as "flawed" as it can sometimes be due to how it applies to high vs low variance players and is very much affected by the honesty of the player putting in his or her scores (not counting all of ones strokes out of ignorance of rules or placation of ones own ego), it really is the basis for the spirit of the game.

The tradition of handicap is one of the things that historically makes this game so great when compared to other sports. It allows anyone to play competitively against anyone else. I'm sure there's a couple that I'm not thinking about or am just unaware of, but I cannot think of any other sport where it is possible to pit someone's best against anyone else's best and have it be a fair and realistically competitive match-up. It is what makes the game so much more accessible and so much more fun to the vast majority of the players. You are around quite a bit of gambling with your friends and you are probably always dealing with sandbaggers and people trying to squeeze extra strokes out here and there. For the most part (and it becomes more true as the scores input become "more honest"), the current handicapping system is pretty damn fair.

Handicap sucks.
What I mean is- let’s say you play with Luke Donald and because of your handicap you win (normally you would lose by few strokes). Would you feel like a winner?

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me (very ambition person) but I wouldn’t.
He (they) worked his ass off to be PGA Player, so why because of your laziness(?), lack of time or whatever you like to call it you can play worse and be a winner ?

Hope you get my point

I'd imagine that to be the consensus of many of the people on the forum here. This is a poker forum foremost. Everyone here is comfortable with taking grandma to the cleaners when she sits down at a table with us. There's no handicapping for poker. Let the best man win at all times. If someone beats you, you just need to learn more and play better. That competitive spirit that poker players have ingrained in themselves isn't something that everyone has. Our sense of "fairness" in poker is that anyone can win any hand, so why not be merciless in our efforts to be victorious. At any point, some schmoe can take our stack, so we need to edge out every chip we can in every other situation.

I don't presume to think that some 18 handicapper that wins a handicapped match against a 3 handicap feels like he's better than the 3 at any point. But he CAN feel that he won a fair fight.


Sorry if the train of thought for this post is choppy. I had it open over the course of 30 minutes of getting ready for work.

Sports: Bowling. Games: Chess, Go.

Is there handicapping in chess to allow anyone to play anyone? I know there's a "bracket"-like system...?

Sure, each piece on the board is worth a certain amount of points. An excellent player might start down a rook and 2 pawns or something playing against a novice. Basically it's like a golf match where the two players come to an agreement on how much of a handicap to get or take.