Hi all. Time for some catch up on some HVGC items for your consideration. The newsletter contains a list of members with shirts awaiting payment and pickup next Tuesday.
Prize allocation: When we initially sent out the questionnaire to all prospective HVGC members to ask if we should have separate men’s and women’s competitions, the committee at the time undertook to reviewing the allocation of prizes at a later date to see if both genders playing in the same competition from the same tee box is fair. After some recent and timely comments from HVGC members I have looked at all the games played in the Vets so far to review the prize awards. While 14 games is not statistically very significant the data (available from me for those who are interested) indicates that women in our Vets competitions are underrepresented in the prize awards by an average 36%. This is a serious discrepancy that must be addressed.
After much investigation and discussions with MiClub it appears that, for the determination of prizes in our Tuesday competitions, only the Slope Rating (117 for men, 125 for women) Handicap adjustment for all players has been taken into account, and not the additional course Scratch Rating (SR) adjustment (33 for men, 36 for women on the front 9) that should be applied when both men and women play from the Yellow tees. To cut a long story short, this means that all women players from the yellow tees should receive an additional 3 handicap strokes advantage over the men.
Unfortunately, this additional handicap cannot be applied prior to hitting off and can currently only be applied after the round is completed. This situation will change in January 2020 when the World Handicap System (WHS) comes into force in Australia, but for now we are stuck with post applying the SR adjustment.
In future I will ensure that the correct handicaps are used in prize calculation. All ladies should be aware that the handicap written on their score card from now on will be increased by 3 shots at the end of the round. How we apply this in events such as 4BBB and Aggregate is unknown at this stage, we will just have to play the game and see the results. Since this week’s round is a 2 Person Ambrose and next week’s round is Stroke, there’s no need to think about your handicap until after the round anyway. We’ll make some tests and compare reality with the above theory, and update members again in following newsletters on this subject.
I apologise to all our Ladies for this serious error in our management of events. A case could be made for reprocessing all our events so far and reassessing the prize allocation but this is not practical. I take full responsibility for this situation and any of our members who would like to make comments regarding this serious error are more than welcome to take the issue up with me personally at any time.
Regards,
Ian Barnard
President / HVGC.