So if the last sentence of my last post wasn't tempting fate, I don't know what was. Today I turned in a net 77. Grr!
On the positive side, I found out that I had been cut for general play by 1. I think hearing that before I went out added to my expectations, though, and doomed me from the beginning.
So my handicap bouncing up and down by one shot over the course of the year has meant there's one specific hole where I sometimes do and sometimes don't get a shot - the thirteenth. This has been bothering me for ages, but the stroke index on 13 is weird. It's not a particularly difficult hole. Not especially long, no water, no bunkers. The sixteenth, on the other hand, is longer, has got both water and bunkers, but has a higher stroke index. In an informal survey this month (I asked some of the people I was sitting with at lunch today) it turns out that everyone agrees with me - the sixteenth is much harder than the thirteenth!
One lady told me that this odd stroke index rating is because of stroke play. Since the course I play is harder at the end (back 9 harder than the front 9, and 15-16-17-18 harder than 10-11-12-13), a match could be over before the higher handicapper has had any of their shots.
On the other hand, no-one actually agrees with the stroke index in the context of our general play. The thing is, no-one is sure how to change it. One theory is that County has to approve the SIs. The more common theory is that we can set it ourselves. I think I'm going to propose to the Committee that we have a look at this issue. What that really means is that the Committee will argue for days about it, probably without reaching any consensus, and most likely nothing will happen at all.
