i put this months score cards in to todays golfers handicap tracker and i have been cut too 7!!!

I dont think im good enough to play off of that. im not a great ball stiker i dont have a great short game. im just kinda average at eveything. i drive on the fairway hit it to the green take a few putts. add it up at the end and ive got a great score.

ive seen players play with handcaps like this and they hit the ball miles better than i do, i just seem to score well

i played today shot a par 66 taking 33 putts! was a good round hit 13 girs in a row in this wind so played well but putted very poorly.

also a big problem is that i play a short course pretty much exclusivly, and i dont think i could play anywhere near 7 on a 7000 yard course.

am i hurting myself playing a 5000 yard course week in week out? 

To be truthful and i'm only talking about my very limited experience of golf (just over a year) but if you are playing a short course all the time then you probably will struggle to play that handicap on a longer (possibly more challenging course). I was regularly hitting mid/low 80's and even got a 78 on a local 5000yd par 70 course that was quite well sheltered but as soon as i got onto one of the longer courses i struggled to keep it in the 90's and it was a battle to score 30+ points from a 28hcp.

What i would say is that you don't mention how the course is set up with regards to penalising poor shots, i say this as playing recently with Paul YHB from these forums in the Leeds get together he played off 20 (i think) but it soon became apparant that he was better than that on the course we played, he went on to describe his home course and the 1ft 1st cut rough and 3 ft second and how accuracy was paramount so much so that when he played Cookridge which was very forgiving it meant (at least to me anyway) that he found that course very easy (even though there wasn't much difference in course length).

PS 33 putts per round to me sounds very nice, so it may be that if your long game is ok then you would manage to play as well on longer courses.

good point kef. the course has alot of water on it, water is in play on 9 holes the rough isnt too bad, the grens are very fast, fairways pretty narrow, and if your a slicer your in trouble on nearly every hole.

if you can hit it well off the tee your normally rewarded with a short iron to the green, The longest iron i played on an approach yesterday was a 6 iron.

i will play a longer course next week 6,342 yards ss71 and tell you how i get on 

what club to you play at josh?

I play a relatively short course as well, but it's pretty tricky and the rough is VERY punishing almost everywhere. Went out last night in that howling wind and it felt like it was the first time i had picked up a set of clubs.

Now now Kefkef, you are flattering me

Kefkef wrote (see)

i say this as playing recently with Paul YHB from these forums in the Leeds get together he played off 20 (i think) but it soon became apparant that he was better than that on the course we played, he went on to describe his home course and the 1ft 1st cut rough and 3 ft second and how accuracy was paramount so much so that when he played Cookridge which was very forgiving it meant (at least to me anyway) that he found that course very easy (even though there wasn't much difference in course length).

 but i must agree with the difference in courses. I definately enjoyed playing at Cookridge and would love to play there again, now that i know what some of the holes play like, I might even get more than the 38 points i scored last week!

I think it depends on whether you only play your home short course or whether you travel to other courses. Once a golf union member, you can enter any other club open where you can see how your handicap stacks up against longer courses. Or as Creo wrote, use 2 for 1's.

I play at a 5000yd par 66 course, but really it's only that short as it has 6 par 3's and no par 5's. Match it to a typical course that may have 3 par 3's and 2 par 5's you can add 700+yards to the course distance. Add to that undulations, lots of wind (not personally) and plateau greens add to the challenge. The course is being upgraded to lengthen it to 5700 this year.

I also play at the same course as the Scottish Amateur Champion and it's not done him any harm to play his golf on a short course.

For practice, on a short course, there's nothing to say you can't hit 7 iron off every tee to leave yourself longer shots to the green.

My home course is very long and very difficult and visitors always struggle.

I am a 16 handicapper and play to that maybe 1 in 6 rounds. At neighbouring courses I shoot at or under my handicap virtually every time. A 5000 yard course I would imagine is 3wood wedge on most holes. If that were true I would guess a mid handicapper would always score low. At my course there are a few par 4s that at the height of summer are driver 5 iron! 

I couldn't agree more with 23rdMan - the lack of a slope system is crazy and means some inter-club and open competitions are wildly skewed in terms of the handicaps.

I play off 10 round a 6200 yd track, but there isn't huge amount of danger, so is very forgiving (particularly off the tee - fairways are narrow, but rough is not that rough and there are lots of parallel fairways that mean you get away with the odd big slice/hook), but on the other hand, the greens aren't great, so good putting is not always rewarded.

But, when I have been to "away" matches or played at championship style courses(e.g., carnoustie championship one month before last year's open followed by Gleneagles PGA in a 40mph gale!!), there is no way I could play to 10 and comparing myself with other similar handicap golfers from those courses is like "night and day"

I agree that the SSS helps to equalise a bit of that, but to say that there is only 1 shot difference between my home course and Carnoustie is just plain wrong in my opinion.

I have used the slope system in both Spain and the US and it certainly seems to better reflect the level of difficulty of a given course and makes for better, more evenly matched games between players from different clubs.

Anyone know why we don't have it here?

So you're a 12hcap in real money then John.

I bet they love you when you go the local "potato field" Open & mop up!

It has been known.

It had a slope of 133 when the championship tees were 6976 yards. it is now 7224 with 30 extra bunkers. 

thanks for your advice guys i think what i will do is give my local course a rest. and play a longer course thats only a few miles more and a few quid more.

ill reset my handicap and just use score cards from this course too see what it comes out as

the course i play is leaside par 66 ss 64 though i reckon the ss should be more like 60 

Creosote wrote (see)

Josh - a very short course is ok to learn to play on, and for casual golfers, but for anyone serious about the game and their golf you need to be playinga  full length course of 6000 yards or longer. The difference is huge. Your scores at present flatter your abilities, and while its good to gain confidence in ones game, one also has to keep a sense of perspective, and to develop a wider range of shots, especially in the long game, than a short course can provide. At the very least play longer courses as a green fee or on 2-for-1.

I disagree with this comment, sometimes at a short course it is more difficult to get the handicap down, if the CSS is 2 shots below par then you must play -3 to get cut.

Length is not everything in a course's make up, is it tight and penal etc etc.

My course is 5600 yards but has 3 par 3s 225 yards plus which doesn't make the course easy.

Also you have to ask what the golfers game is like.  There are many golfers at my club who don't hit the ball very far (but are straight) and can chip and put well who have artificially high handicaps as when they travel their handicaps struggle as they do not have the length.

Personally I feel I am a better golfer for my handicap away from my course.

To often people look at length and think that makes a course easy, we had a Pro-Am last week, only 2 from 35 Pros broke par (one being Jamie Spence) and the best score was -3 (65).

5600 yard course easy?  Don't think so....

Ours is shortish - a good test is in the local county matches where we travel to away matches we don't really find our handicaps are wrong and acquit ourselves quite well likewise visiting teams find our course challenging.

Having said that on visiting some of the coastal courses around I would struggle to play off 25 let alone 15. 

I think it's true to say that playing your golf exclusively on the same or similar courses can hold your game back.

Players from long quite open courses quite often struggle around short tight courses and vice versa.

Just played royal epping. was nice to play a diffrent course and i started really poorly +5 after 5. i wondered if i was kidding myself. then i hit a booming drive the confidence came and played well shot 78 +6 6342 yards

funny thing i know i can beat that score as the course had no yardage markers and i had to guess at the yardage there wasnt any par 4 i struggled to reach in 2. it was harder than my normal course but still wasnt really hard.

TIger my local exec course is tough as old boots but cheap and a good proving ground. 6471yards. But when I go to Voyage, a world class course. (world student champs hosted here) I am pleasantly rewarded by the generous fairway surface. but the greens are faster. Its a fair trade and I shoot lower scores invariably!

so many factors in who a course plays that I don't think about it too much. just enjoy EVERY swing.