What difference do the tees make for handicaps? My course for example is 75.3 from the tips and 73.2 from one tee up. Wouldn't a scratch in theory be the same caliber of player regardless of tees played? They rate the tees differently for ladies as well. My course is 80.0 from the Blues for a woman. My buddies wife played for UT and she is a +1.9 and good, but not Tour caliber. Obviously a +4 is a number out of my butt, but I think it's reasonable-ish.

Although it isn't a sport, Kelly Kulick won the PBA Tournament of Champions.

No money in bowling, women are solid.

Haven't really thought this through, but it seems pretty likely to me that a PGA Tour setup, rated for women, could be 85 or more. Which means that even as a +4, the average score would be into the 80's.

I picture two bell curves (no pun) with some overlap at the tails...The higher scores of the men over lapping with the lower scores of the women..

I once saw Natalie Gulbis trying to play at TPC Las Colinas the week after the Nelson and she hit one out of the rough and her little right arm actually just fell right off. It was pretty unfortunate because she had to cook the whole meal for me later on that night with only her left hand.

When Trip Kuehne played in the US Open in 2007 the USGA rated the course for his handicap and put it at 78.3 slope of 150 on a par 70. I think a typical Tour course probably plays more like 4 strokes higher than whatever the actual course rating is....but nowhere near 85. Having had a fairly accurate handicap for the last few years and playing some Nationwide courses (not as many as I had hoped) I do believe that the typical Tour pro is about a +8 which would mean that the typical course rating would be somewhere in the mid-high 70's.
That is a pretty good picture and probably very accurate.

I think you missed what I was saying. Take the course you mentioned for example; it was rated 78.3 using men's rating criteria.

But what if they rated it (from the same tees as the 78.3) using womens criteria? Like avg driving distance, distance to hazards from center lines, etc. The rating for women would be significantly higher then the 78.3 for men, right?

So my earlier point that if the LPGA played a full field event on a PGA Tour setup, the average score would be well into the 80s would make sense.

Oh yeah...forgot they rate it different for women.

Well, I guess we can all agree that I am not good enough to play on Tour so who am I to throw stones....

I disagree. I think you are certainly good enough to play the LPGA Tour.

BO

+8? is that even possible?

I would think my handicap this year has been over +6 all year so, yeah +8 is possible. My actual handicap on ghin.com is +4.4 and I didn't turn in a few 65-67's....or any of Q School. First stage's course rating was 74.1 and I shot 68-69-68-68 so factor those in with the other scores for the year and I was easily +6.5 or so.

Sadly I don't think my second stage scores would make my top half of scores though. Fail.

Sandbagger!

Apples-to-apples. It is disingenuous to use a ladies rating to compute a handicap when comparing to men. So your friend's wife is about a 4/5, assuming a 7 shot CR difference. A good player, but about 3/4 shots below tour caliber.

I would like you to tell me a +4 woman player using men's handicap. Wie may have been at one time, but certainly not any more.

And obviously blue/black courses 7,000+ yards hurt women much more than men, due to their length limitations. A short course would equalize their abilities somewhat, but the implied difficulty of a shorter course would provide other challenges to a woman. (forced carries, premium on spin approaches, premium on longer accurate tee shots, etc.)

I would put the over/under at 12 LPGA tournament wins in a season, if you decided to play at least 20 events.

I am guessing your median score would be around 66, which would put you around -20/-24 each week, which would give you a >50% chance of beating the field.

Us handicaps make players sound like they play off a lot less then they really should, well compared to Aussies anyway. If a course is a par 72 that is the par regardless off the scores that are returned or the conditions here I kind Of wish I played off a USGa handicap, then I could achieve my goal of a 5 handicap. As for plus 8. That would be unatainable here. I have a tour pro buddy get to plus 5 and that was crazy for here hehe

Yes. My game at the club plays full handicap wolf which is absurd. I wind up on the small team every hole and since the game is 2 handicaps and lower you never really know who is going to make birdie but somebody is...I have to give a 2 handicap a shot on a par 3 in our game.
I agree that you should use the same rating to compare play, I never even realized that there are different ratings for men and women until looking up Sherry's handicap. I called her last night to ask her and she said she does keep a "real" handicap from the blue tees at our course and it is a 2.0.
How can you have fair competition if you aren't at least rating the course to some degree? If you have a par shooter from a hard course and a par shooter from an easy course how does the one player stand a chance?

One thing about the ladies is, they aren't as elite as the men. I think if you pick a random guy and give him training, and a random female, and give her some training, the female has a way better shot at making the LPGA then the male does at making the PGA.. Or another way of saying... There are fewer male golfers per one million that make the PGA then female golfers that make the LPGA. So just in a pure numbers sense, i think the PGA is way better than the LPGA.

Sigh. No way. The girls on the lpga tour are the best women golfers on the planet, and the dynamic of how and why they got there is pretty much identical to the pga tour.

Hell, you couldn't give some random guy some training and have him make the LPGA tour. I've played plenty of lol 6200 yard courses and I don't break par at any of them, and I've been as low as a 2.1 handicap and I've played golf all of my life.

Also, just thinking about it, this doesn't make sense. If 125 men are on the PGA tour and 125 women are on the LPGA tour, then there are 125/1,000,000 on the PGA tour and 125/1,000,000 on the LPGA tour.

I don't actually know how many people are on the LPGA tour (if it is 125 or less), but either way it's just a silly comment. If the PGA arbitrarily limited its membership to 90, the reverse would suddenly be true (assuming the lpga is at 125). I think what you are trying to say is that the 500th best male golfer in the world is waaaaay better than the 500th best women's golfer in the world within their own tour, which is probably kind of true. It's still kind of hard to tell because we are obviously conditioned to respect a guy who can shoot 70 over a girl who shoots 77, even though it's a whole different sport basically.

I think all he's saying is that fewer women play golf so there's less competition to crack the LPGA. For instance, let's say a PGA Tour member is in the top .001% of all male golfers. Therefore, if five times more men than women play golf, an LPGA Tour member would be in the top .005% of all female golfers. Assuming of course an equal number play on each tour.

I pulled those numbers out of my ass, they mean nothing. And now my ass hurts.

BO

Pokeromglol, what do you think is harder, to be the fastest 100m sprinter in the world, or the best archer?

What do you think is harder, the best basketball player, or the best bowler? The world's greatest physicist, or the world's foremost expert on the history of the post office in Tuscaloosa Alabama?

Its just like people on here have said it's easy for a girl to get a college scholarship for golf.

IMO LPGA tour runs a somewhat capricious process to gain new players. Players under 18 are excluded, and the top 80 money earners are exempt for the next year, even though the bottom end of the top 80 are not really that good.

Also, the money and travel on LPGA is getting worse each year. Just paying a caddie is a big $ hit. Sponsorships are pretty weak as well. I have no way to prove this, but outside the top 40 or so there may be a 100 or so non-touring women players who are roughly equal talent-wise with the typical LPGA player. They just don't want to tour and break even, which is basically what it is.

easily your best post ever imo.

Tiger is rated +13.5 I believe, or at least he was.

[x] This thread is worthless without pics of hot female golfers