2  Shanker  29 pts:  2

3  Mulligan  17 pts

Ashes:  No Anzacs – Lions three up

Chuckup:  Brewer bruvvers

LONELY LONG REEF!! – Record for lowest turnout at Long Reef in dry conditions (Chucky holds the record for wet conditions as he was the only one who showed up!!).  Average play from yours truly takes the day, mostly thanks to poor play from brother and even worse from Mulligan.  At least he had the sense not to nominate …

So, a new column added to the Chuckup table – points dropped.  This is the key to who has a mathematical chance of still winning it.  Top four still have a good chance, but Mulligan is best placed as he has the points in the bag and only one to go.  Thief has two to go and if he was to score two maximums, he would win it.  Going down the table there are still potential winners but they would have to play a lot of games in a short time.

I have mostly unravelled the recent worldwide introduction of the new golf handicapping system.  Bottom line is that the 0.93 multiplier has gone which means all our Anvo handicaps go up (see handicaps table with new calculation – I have changed the way the spreadsheet does this to match the new rules).  In its place, what we used to call the slope sheet in the Pros shop is now called the “Daily Handicap Sheet” and now includes the scratch rating.  If you were a zero handicap player (i.e. a “scratch” player) then the scratch rating is the worldwide rating that compares your course with every other course, irrespective of the par for your course, and should represent the difference in scores for a scratch player playing to his/her handicap on those courses due to their relative difficulty.  For example, Long Reef par is 71 but its scratch rating is 69.  A scratch player playing to handicap should play Long Reef in 69. To make up for the fact that it is easy, the two shots difference between scratch and par is taken off the slope after it has been calculated so it affects every golfer.  Same for Mona Vale which is par 72 but scratch 70.  So in future, you should be starting with a higher handicap as the 0.93 has gone, but it is still going to go down (rather than up as it used to) when you look at the playing handicap “Daily” sheet when we play the easier scratch rated courses.  If we play a course with the same scratch rating as par, then this drop for your playing handicap should not occur.  So the new thing to concentrate on is the difference between a course’s par and scratch rating.  The other thing is there is a PCC adjustment (Playing Conditions Calculation).  Suppose there is a 4-club wind and everyone scores badly in the weekly comp.  GA will adjust everyone’s score up based on the normal spread of scores in the comp at that course.  That is something we could consider at the end of a round.

There’s some other really curious stuff that they say which I can’t personally see and have not experienced, but I am prepared to crap on about to anyone who is interested.  However, the important stuff is covered above.