Tiger's handicap...and not his knee: Editors' Blog: Golf Digest

Tiger's handicap...and not his knee

Tuesday, June 10, 2008 Comments

Alex Lavin, Highland Park, Ill., perhaps thinking that Tiger's knee injury makes him vulnerable, send this question.

My friends and I have been engrossed in an argument over the past few days: The score Tiger Woods would shoot at our local course, with a rating of 71.1. The question: If I carry an Index of 0.8 could I come within ten shots of Tiger if we played together. Compelling arguments say I could, yet there is strong support for the other side. Please give us some guidance.

Having had to do a few calculations like this for the Golf Digest U.S. Open Challenge, I went to Ron Read of the USGA (he'll be the starter at the Open, as always) and Dean Knuth, our consultant on handicap matters and the former Pope of Slope.

To answer your question, we need a couple of additional pieces of information: Tiger's handicap and the slope of your golf course. A friend in the industry, a scratch player himself, who claims to have calculated this, says Tiger's last 20 tournament scores make him a plus-13. Even if we were to use his ten worst scores instead of his ten best from the last 20, says the friend, he would be plus-8. But let's go with plus-13; he's earned it.

And let's assume the slope of your course is 130, from which we calculate your course handicap. That's done by dividing this slope by the average slope (113). In that case, 130 divided by 113 is 1.15. Multiply that by your 0.8 Index and you get 1.05, or 1. We'll drop Tiger one shot because this course is harder than average. He's now a plus-12.

Things still aren't looking good for you.
--Bob Carney

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What a load of crap. Totally ridiculous. Let's say you play on a decent public course with a par of 72 and a rating of about 71. TW's going to average 59 on that course? Really? Put the money up anytime you want. We'll have him shoot six rounds there. I'll give you 100-to-1.

I've heard this "they shoot 60 anytime they want to" crap before. If you want to believe all that Tiger-is-God, these-guys-are-goooood marketing hype from Nike and the PGA Tour, knock yourself out with the rest of the starry-eyed 13-year-olds. One time Steve Johnson (at the time Haney's head instructor at his "HH Golf Ranch," when I was there) was going on about Mark O'Meara that way--how he'd just come back to Dallas a couple of weeks before, had played four times and hadn't been over 63 in any one of those rounds. Mm-hmm. I'm not saying it's not possible he could have shot that low four times; I'm saying there's no way O'Meara, Tiger, or anybody else _averages_ that low on any regulation golf course of decent length.

Tiger finished what, two under at the Open? If he's a +12, that means he's 46 strokes higher than his "handicap"? Right. Even if you put course ratings above par at every tour event (which they shouldn't be, with the perfect conditioning)--say, at 75--this would mean that Tiger would have to _average_ shooting 62 or 63 in every round at every event. Does that make sense to you?

Honestly. It's like the old Bill Brasky skit on SNL. What's next, these guys can flap their arms and fly to the moon? It's not enough that they can shoot 66 on your local course regularly?

What really sets them apart--and you can look this up statistically--is how few bogeys they make and how few 79s they shoot, not how they make enough birdies to shoot 59 or 61 or 63 every round, because they just don't. The reasons these guys are better than I was at a plus-2--the reason I needed to get better to play for a living--was that a guy like O'Meara might come out and shoot 67 on the course I was playing, and maybe I'd play great and match him. But the second day he's going to shoot 68 again, or whatever, and I'm going to shoot 72 or 73. Third day, he's at 68 again, and I come back with a 71. Fourth day, he goes 67, and I really finish strong with a 69. That would've been a really solid week for me, then. And at the end of it, I'd have heard, "Congrats, you shot 9 under. You only lost by nine." I mean, I shot scores that only a tiny fraction of players in the world will ever shoot, and I got smoked.

This is not just talk; it's important for anybody who actually wants to improve and who wants to know _how_ pros are as good as they are. The leading scores on the PGA Tour--around 68-69, usually, by late in the season. Right now Mickelson's the official leader at 69.45. Let's call it 69, adjusted. He gets there with just under four birdies per round, or just less than two per side. Most people would be shocked at how few birdies these guys actually make on the average, because they're used to seeing the leaders tearing it up on Saturday and Sunday. And with only four birds per round, do the math: Throwing out the rare eagle, he's making about one bogey a round on the average. Now, you're not going to get to an average of 60, or 58, or whatever, with an average of four birdies a round, are you? Or do you think these courses are rated up around 79 or 80? But you can sure get to 10 or 12 or 14 under at the end of a 72-hole event.

These guys are good, all right, but for reasons most people don't understand. I guarantee you there were days when I, or any good scratch or plus-handicap player, could have beaten the best player in the world. But give us ten 72-hole tournaments, and the differences add up to a crushing accumulation. If a plus-2 plays Tiger even at plus-5, say, and if that's an accurate reflection of Tiger's actual scores against ratings (not the ridiculous plus-12), it means Tiger beats him by 12 strokes in a four-round tournament, on the average--and that's a really good player (about in the top 0.1% in the world) who's getting drubbed.

If you want to score better, stop the leaking; stop the overpar holes. The best pros average around three under per round because they don't back up much while they're trying to go forward; their birdies are working to get them further under par instead of just back to even.

Posted by emncaity June 28, 2008 1:36 AM