Oh No - Not This Again

6 months ago I wrote a post about the administration of the golf club of which I am a member, which turned out to be quite controversial.

I basically highlighted the regular errors made in administering the golf aspect, wrong handicap adjustments, arbitrary cuts in handicap, wrong winners of competitions being announced, and despite being anonymous (I have never named any individual or body negatively on here) and factually correct, some people it appears don’t embrace being told of errors. I can understand that attitude. However, the post achieved its goal in that these errors were brought to the surface, and I believe that an effort was made to try and improve things.

It’s disappointing and frustrating then, that 6 months later, that things appear to have slipped again.

The first competition I played in last Saturday was for all of the stableford winners of the previous 12 months, a total of 29 possible entrants, but excluding multiple winners the maximum field was probably in the region of 24.

The first contact to the people who had qualified to play in this wasn’t until Wednesday, less than 72 hours before the competition. This didn’t give people much time, and I’m sure that with the lack of notice some people, who would have been available if notified 2 weeks ago, were now no longer available to play. The final field on Saturday was a pitiful 7, a real devaluation of the competition which should be one of the main competitions of the year, after all it is effectively a ‘champion of champions’ event.

Furthermore, and I can’t state this as fact but I believe it to be true, whilst on the first tee there were other people playing a normal Saturday morning social game going down the tenth hole, who said that they had won a stableford during the previous 12 months but hadn’t been contacted at all to see if they were available to play.

Some people may say that I shouldn’t complain, as it’s easier to win a 7 player event than a 24 player event, but that isn’t the point. Everyone who qualified should be given the full opportunity to play, and given as much notice as possible.

I also mentioned earlier this year about how I was presented with the Order of Merit last year despite proving that I hadn’t won it. This year’s order of merit finishes a week on Sunday, and so far 28 of the 30 events have been played. So how am I doing this year? Well, I haven’t got a clue, as there has not been a single update posted in the clubhouse of the current scores after any of the 28 events played so far. Like the other competition above, the Order of Merit should be a big deal, that people can aspire to winning and check their placing in the table as the year progresses. What use is a year long competition if no-one knows how they are doing?

Last year I calculated the Order of Merit results myself by downloading the results, and then using a bit of Excel wizardry. So why haven’t I done that this year? The reason is that the online results facility has been out of action for a full 8 months now. Originally this was due to an intellectual property rights issue between the software providers, these things happen, but I would expect a resolution in less than 8 months, whether it be with the current providers sorting their issue proactively, the golf club applying pressure for it to be fixed, or terminating the contract and moving elsewhere. 8 months without the ability to look at results is a really poor show, regardless of the reason given. The only way of finding out a result is to go to the golf club once the results have been published. Importantly, no online access makes it much more laborious to find out the CSS of a competition, which is required when I am in Scotland and have a competition the following week; I need to know what my adjusted handicap is.

As I’ve said before, some people want to play social golf and couldn’t give a monkeys about competitions and handicaps, and that is absolutely fine, but those who do care are being short changed, and deserve better. I believe that this feeling is growing amongst the golfers who are competition and handicap aware, and I am not a lone voice.

I really hope I’m not sitting here in another 6 months writing about the next multitude of problems, maybe with it being the end of the season there is the opportunity for stock to be taken and improvements developed over the winter. I hope so.