ASGA Is About Fun and Fairness to All Players, From All Tees
ASGA has been around approaching 45 years and many changes have come along that kept it thriving. Since the first board decided in the parking lot at Lions to form the association, we have striven to keep having fun and be as fair as possible to all members.
A few years back under the presidency of Don Pratt it was noted that many members nearing the age of 80 and beyond were hitting the ball a little "shorter" than before. It was then that the idea hatched that for these "older" players, when your handicap and your age totaled to 100 or greater, you could in fact play from the reds after requesting to the handicap chair and being approved. It was also thought that perhaps the red tee members or "100 Club" as it has come to be known should play against each other for flight purposes.
The fact is, playing in the same flights created a problem since there were fewer 100 Club members. Often flights were too small or large to be reasonably equal to the other members. A few years later it was decided to mix the groups by handicaps and let them compete against each other. Though, there was likely an equalization process available it was not incorporated into the program at that time. Effective with the next event played July 6, 2021 your board has approved moving to a the process that USGA strongly recommends be used when players and gender play from different tees in the same event. I will highlight some of the things considered during the study before it was voted into being our process. This NEWS is longer than most but I feel you need to know, if you wish to, as to why we voted to change. I have included words from Bruce Jones, Paul Redden, Bill Burke, but can assure you the entire board was involved.
Bruce Jones, Website Chair, spent considerable time in researching our need to change to be fair to all and below is a summary from him.
"Under the Handicap system we use at ASGA, when players use more than one tee in an event (as we do at all events), a modification for each event is necessary to level the playing field. This applies to both men and women participants. The USGA accommodated this modification in their basic handicap calculation when they changed to the World Handicap System in 2020. We however choose to use the prior system, which uses a Course Handicap adjustment.
"Without this adjustment, men playing from Green Tees are at a disadvantage to men playing from Red Tees, and women are at a disadvantage to both.
"The Board voted in favor of making this modification to our course handicaps to align with USGA recommendations. For implementation, smaller tee groups usually have their handicap adjusted to the largest group. Effective July 6, our events will implement the modification. When you view the Latest Handicap Listing, the change will be incorporated into your course handicap automatically. Please note this does not affect your Handicap Index.
"Here is a table that shows what the adjustment will be for our most-played courses.Thus when playing Morris Williams, handicaps for Men playing Red Tees will be lowered 1 stroke from their former Course Handicap. Similarly, handicaps for women playing Morris Williams will be raised 3 strokes. This applies to team as well as individual events."
For further information:
http://golfsoftware.com/learn/handicap-adjustment-different-tees.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn1sSqTTJWI
Paul Redden, The Immediate Past President and former Handicap Chair contributed a lot of fact gathering on payouts under our previous process and concluded that though red players may have earned slightly more percentage of the time than others on some course it was reasonably balanced. He then recently went back and checked the new system and concluded with a phone call to me last evening the following statement and borrowed some of the USGA words to make the point.
"Using the USGA Standardized process when multiple tees are used in an event will create fairness for all genders from all tees on all courses. "
Bill Burke, your Handicap Chair, has worked hard to keep your handicap up to date before each event. Bill uses the system at hand to do that as he like most of us does not totally understand the handicap process that creates the actual handicap. He feels the handicap will take care of itself and that is still going to be true. When you check your handicap before each event you should know all our being treated equal to get there and the process used to balance out difference of tees etc. is built into the total system for fairness to all.
Please let me summarize. Is ASGA about to become a totally USGA compliant group? Heck no! We can have as many clubs as we want, can move ball a dab if we want, can change balls in the middle of a sentence if we please, and many more senior rules. We do putt out and can be proud of that and the many USGA rules we do follow. However, we have many members that could qualify from the red tees but don't choose to, many that hit their golf ball where and how it lies, and many other choices that are ok. These choices do not give them an advantage. However, without making this standardized process for hitting from multiple tees we create a slight unfair advantage and we choose to be fair to all genders and teeing choices that are allowed. The red tees (forward advanced tees) are here to stay and should be.
In the past I heard many say "some of the people hitting from the red tees can hit the ball farther than me." Believe you me that is true from the green/white or whatever we agree to in the future as we continue to stay healthier having fun playing golf and have our first "shot their age" with a score of 100 or greater coming sooner than you might think. I still play from the green/whites and most of the time hit my second shot first. When I move to the forward advanced tees at some point I expect that most hitting farther than me may still be the case. I will bet you one thing though, I will be having fun and the scoring will be as fair as possible.
This News has been brought to you on behalf of the ASGA Board of Directors and The Austin Senior Golf League,
Please skip on down and read a brief story about some of our past members.
Travis McWhorter
President
