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Golf Exorcism for Halloween

If you are interested in organizing a club tournament this Halloween, here is an interesting format used by the West Puget Sound Men’s Club, a club that uses MyScorecard to help make their rounds more enjoyable and fun. We appreciate their sharing their annual tournament with us.

Halloween Golf Tournament

Format

The tournament is a regular tournament with two twists:

1) Based on your handicap (refer to chart below) you will be allowed to exorcise a specified number of demon holes before the round. Just declare the hole in advance and write in a par for each.
2) After the round you will be allowed to subtract a specific number of strokes for your handicap.

Strategy

So you say you’re not afraid of ghosts?

You may wish to use your exorcisms to play “easy” holes aggressively without fear of a big number. Should you birdie one of your selected demon holes, not only do you get to keep the birdie (you can erase the par you wrote on the card, then enter the birdie,), but that exorcism becomes a wild card for you to use after the round on any hole that took a bite out of you. A wild card is a powerful tool – thus the tough decision is whether to choose the hardest hole, or perhaps the easiest hole and play it aggressively. Continue reading “Golf Exorcism for Halloween”

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You’re Better than Average

You may have had a tough day out on the golf course, but here’s something to keep in the back of your head.

Despite decades of scientific improvements in clubs and balls, more physical training, and all sorts of new ideas on improving your swing, the average golf score remains the same: around 100 for 18 holes.

90However, for MyScorecard members, that number is between 90 and 91 (for reference, the average handicap is just under 16). Some people may attribute it to the Hawthorne effect, which is at least partially true, but we attribute at least a portion of it to the fact that our members are just better.

So do a little dance – you deserve it.

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Welcome Digital Divot Members

We’d like to welcome the members of Digital Divot who have joined the MyScorecard service.

Knowing the importance of proper handicapping, Digital Divot has partnered with MyScorecard.com to transition their members’ accounts, scores, and handicaps to the MyScorecard service. MyScorecard has worked closely with the USGA from inception, building a system that adheres to the there rules and regulations, avoiding the unfortunate issues that we experienced.

As endorsed by Joshua Richards, owner and developer of Digital Divot: MyScorecard provides a place for members who loved Digital Divot to continue with all the great features that they enjoyed on our site, as well as the many new features MyScorecard offers. We’re glad to be able to partner to provide our members with a great experience and smooth transition from our site.

If you know of a web site that might benefit from partnering with MyScorecard, please don’t hesitate to let us know and we would be happy to reach out to them.

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The Quirks of the Slope

We will sometimes choose some of the more interesting questions asked by our members to share with you. Our most recent one comes from a member who shot a 70 on a course with a rating of 71.3 and slope of 132 (something we can all aspire to). When entering his score into MyScorecard, the differential read -1.1, which was actually less than the -1.3 the difference between the score (70) and course rating (71.3). Wouldn’t you expect that if you played a harder course, it should be greater than the difference of the rating and score? Continue reading “The Quirks of the Slope”

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You vs. the Pros: New Pros Added

PGALPGA

Over the weekend we expanded our You vs. the Pros report, so that now your can choose from all of the top ranked golfers from the PGA and LPGA tours and view their stats from 2009.

We’re always looking to improve the report, so if you have other statistics that you track and would like to compare  (note that the PGA has to track them as well), or if there is another golfer you would rather measure yourself against, just let us know and we’d be happy to add them in

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New Blog Name: The Scratch Pad

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions and feedback. While the finalists were all strong contenders, the consensus (among both you and us) formed around one name . The clear winner was The Scratch Pad, and we’re very excited to have that as the new name for our online golf handicap blog. We’ll be posting the name shortly.

As a thank you to Dayton House (who suggested the name), we’ll be sending him a free year of membership.

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Help us Find a Name: Finalists

We’ve definitely appreciated your suggestions for our blog name – there were many good and creative ones, which made it difficult to narrow the list down to a few finalists. However, after deliberating among the the MyScorecard team, we select 4 finalists for the blog name. We’ve listed them below, and appreciate your feedback as to which name you like best.

The finalists, in alphabetical order:

  1. The “Hole” truth – suggested by Mark Thielen
  2. Beyond the Rough – suggested by Rick Cihak
  3. The Scratch Pad – suggested by Dayton House
  4. The Up & Down – suggested by Mike R and seconded by Fred N
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How much does putting really matter?

It does, but maybe not quite as you thought.

Drawing on our database of millions of scores, we are able to pose and answer questions that bring you interesting insights.

So we asked ourselves – how important is putting for your handicap? Some people think it’s quite important (how many of you own or have read Dave Pelz’s Putting Bible?). Others believe it makes no difference and don’t even bother hitting the practice green.

So we took a look at our database and ran some numbers. Continue reading “How much does putting really matter?”

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Help us Find a Name

 
It’s been decided. Online Handicap Blog is not doing it for us. It’s not strong. It’s not that exciting; it’s not really even that sexy.

We think we can do better, and we think you can help. We need a name, and potentially a slogan. Post your suggestions below (or send them to us) and share your thoughts about which suggestion you like most. The best one will become the new name for our blog.