Has the USGA Shot Itself In The Foot?

As you are probably aware of by now the USGA announced earlier the upcoming rules changes for 2016. Recently they have come out with the changes to the handicap rules. All of this comes at a time when golf seems to be struggling and losing players and the USGA is supposed to be trying to grow the game.

The first major change that upset so many was the ban on anchoring the putter. I question this because you are penalizing the wrong people. Good putters still putt using the conventional style. The players that went to anchoring were poor putters just trying to become mediocre putters. This change took away something that helps many golfers enjoy the game more, which should be the goal.

Now they have come out with a change that prevents the single golfer just out for a quick round from posting a score. At this point I won’t even go into how difficult that is going to be to enforce. The thing that really upsets me is that by banning anchoring this means that if you continue to anchor, you cannot post those score because they are not played within the rules of golf.

I was reading a post about the changes on a blog by Geoff Shackelford and came across this statement:
“What I foresee happening after January 1, 2016 is the establishment of a sort of off-kilter dichotomy – reasonable, honorable golfers who post honestly tabulated scores for those solo early-morning or after-work nine hole rounds, or the rare solo 18-hole round, though scrupulously accurate in their accounting, will become scofflaws when they post their scores online, as many will still do, for their local association’s handicap committee to use in assessing their GHIN rating.

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So now many of us will become outlaws; honest, and dishonest, all in the same action – and all because the USGA has decided to reverse a practice which had been in effect for decades.”

I think all of these things together have the potential of creating a situation where people start pulling out of the USGA Handicap System. A major portion of the people that play golf now are recreational and don’t have handicaps. There are even more that have handicaps and never play in USGA events or structured inter-club competitions and have no real reason to have a handicap other than to level the playing field with their buddies.

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There is nothing to prevent clubs from setting up their own handicap rules and systems for free and stop paying the fees for a USGA certified handicap. It is already a common practice among leagues at public courses. As long as everyone plays by the “same” rules they can compete with each other.

Keep in mind that people that wish to manipulate the system will, just like they do now. These folks are called “sandbaggers”. The only effective tool for dealing with that is having a separate handicap based on tournament scores only. Some clubs are already doing that.

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Time will tell how this is all going to work out, but I think the USGA has made a huge mistake for no good reason that may come back to haunt them.