Month: July 2017

2017 – League Championship Update

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Playing well this season?  Winning some flight money? Your handicap going down some?  Did you know that we have the Association Invitational Championship outing?

Great! You may be in the running for an invitation for the Association Championship on August 29.  Please mark your calendar for the possibility.

How Do I Qualify

  • Qualifications (see below for details)
    • Lowest 10 NET weekly tournament scores from the first 18 weeks of the season ending August 18
    • Member with at least 10 rounds scored in 2016
    • Flights based on Handicap Guide (HG) distribution from qualified members as of 1/31
    • 16 Members plus ties for each of 4 Brackets (1, 2, 3, 4) with the lowest average net scores for 10 of the 18 weekly tournaments  (revised from 2016 and 2017 Member Book – see below)
    • If qualified members cannot attend, we will extend invitations to the next qualified member(s) for the Bracket in order of lowest average net score.

Alternates / Substitutions

Please note, that each year we have several members from each bracket who cannot attend.  This means that even if you are 17th to perhaps 22th place you have a high probability for an invitation.  As of today, invitations would go to the top 20 (and even into the 30s places for Bracket 4).  Because several low net players don’t have the required minimum 10 rounds.

You can see the current status Championship Qualification Report for the entire Association at Ourgolfstats.com on the Green Sheets Report.  It is the second report, on each Division, before any weekly results.

DIRECT LINK TO GREEN SHEETS and Championship Qualification Status 

Check this every week through August 20 to see where you stand.

The Final Qualification Report will be available about August 22.  However, even if you are in 17th to perhaps about 30th place you might qualify as an Alternate.

Respond to Invitations Immediately

If you are invited to play as a top 16 (or as an alternate further down the list), please be ready to commit IMMEDIATELY.  We will be scrambling to fill slots and we don’t have much time.

Although play is completed August 18, we won’t have final scores and analysis in until August 22. We will have only a few days to get the invitations issued, and all spots committed.

Revisions to Bracket 1 Qualifications for 2017

For 2017 Season we now allow A Flight to pick either Forward or Back tees like all other divisions.  This required a change in the Championship Qualifications for Bracket 1.

Now Bracket 1 will used only NET SCORES for the qualification, exactly the same as Brackets 2, 3, and 4.    Previously we allocated 1/2 of the Bracket 1 to Low Average Gross, and 1/2 half to Low Average Net when all A Flight was required to play from the back tees.  This is no longer appropriate with both Forward and Back tees available.

Download (PDF, 21KB)

 

 

Norton Erroneously Blocks Metro Seniors Website – False Positives

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Norton Erroneously Blocks Metro Seniors Website

We have a new report (7/10/17) of Norton Web Safe blocking the Metro Seniors website and posts as malicious.  This apparently happened because of a broken link that was published and emailed about a Special Event result.  This is NOT a malicious site problem simply a typo.

There is nothing wrong with the Metro Seniors site.  We have security to prevent problems.

Unless a site subscribes (pays) to a Norton service, Norton assumes that the site is malicious.   They will block access for Norton Web Safe users for a wide range of issues.  Including having a variety of files to view and download like our schedules, tournament results, rules, regulations and so on.  We have these to give members information they want.

Requesting Norton to reclassify a site for a non-subscriber is not easy and can be delayed.

Norton Users can report False Positives to eliminate the blocks

If you use Norton for antivirus, you will have Web Safe and you may be blocked from the Metro Seniors website for “false positives” as they call it.

As a Norton user you can fix the problem by reporting “false positives”.  This will reclassify our site as non-malicious and will let you have access again.  This may be the fastest way to fix the problem.

Please use the following links to review your actions for fixing your Norton Web Safe and reporting this False Positive.

This links to Norton’s information on Web Safe and False Positives.  It provides information to fix your Web Safe and reporting errors.  CLICK HERE

This links to Norton process for reporting False Positives.

As an alternative, I suggest that you turn off the Web Safe portion of Norton to access Metro Seniors.

More information from Norton’s site

Download (PDF, 144KB)

Pace of Play for Data Geeks

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In discussions on pace of play several issues come up including:

  • Members Age (we are “seniors” after all)
  • Course Difficulty (Rating and Slope)
  • Course Crowding – Number of players
  • Course Conditions (Path Only, Rain, et al)
  • Players’ Skill as measured by Handicap Index

The Pace of Play Logs are giving us lots of data on Pace Time.  Flights, scores, handicaps, tees played, and course rating and slope by tee are in OurGolfStats.  Plus we have players’ age data in our membership database.

Combining this data gives us lots of opportunity for analysis.

I wanted to better understand why Division 1 had 10 to 15 minutes slower pace the Division 2-5.  I have summarized the Division and Event data for the first 11 weeks (through 6/22/17).  This is 53 rounds representing over 4300 individual rounds of golf.

Summary Data By Division

  Average Avg Gross Avg HCP Avg Pace
Division Events Count Age Score Guide Avg
1 10 686 71.8 98.8 25.2 04:41
2 10 781 69.5 92.4 20.9 04:26
3 11 1015 71.5 93.6 22.1 04:25
4 11 899 72.9 94.4 22.7 04:30
5 11 974 68.6 95.1 23.5 04:31

Observations

Average Player’s Age

There is no clear relationship between pace and average age of players either by Division or by individual events. We range in average age of actual players from 68.6 to almost 73.  Division 5 is our newest and youngest.  But, Division 4, our oldest, plays at the same pace.

Course Difficulty

There was no relationship in course difficulty (Rating, or Slope or even a combination or Rating and Slope).  Why – with many of our members playing forward tees, the average slope and rating for most courses get reduced.  By averaging the actual rating and slope of tees played, the Divisions’ ratings were essentially 66+ Rating and 112+ Slope.  Even looking at events’ averages, the data was very scattered.  Other factors were far more important.

Course Crowding

There was no clear evidence of course crowding on average pace.  Most events ranged from 75 to 100 players.  At this level number of players is not a major factor on slow play.  This is why Division 5 was formed – to keep average players around 100 at most.  One event with 132 players (tee start) did slow play, but the average for that event was still better that 4:30.

Course Conditions

Although we had a lot of rain and wet conditions at the start of the season, there is simply not enough data to show any clear directions.  On many of the rain or path only events, we had fewer players.  That may have compensated for slower Path Only conditions.

Player Skill (Handicap Guide and Gross Scores)

Player Skill as measured by Handicap Guide or Gross Scores is by far the strongest factor for Division and Event Pace of Play.  There is almost perfect correlation  by Division and very strong correlation by Event.

Every 3 strokes added to the Average Gross Score for all players adds 7 minutes to the average Pace of Play.

 

Download (PDF, 12KB)

 

Now more questions

Why is Div 1 Handicap Guide so high?

Why is Div 2 Handicap Guide so low?

Are more Div 1 players playing back?  Fewer low handicap players?

 

Division 1 Schedule Change – 7/21 and 9/8

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Division 1 Members – following is a course schedule change.  We had to swap dates between Far Oaks and Incline Village due to issues beyond our control. Only the dates were changed, everything else remains the same.

Vince Italiano, VP Div 1, will issue a confirming email the week of each tournament.

REVISED SCHEDULE

Friday, July 21 –  Incline Village   $25   Split Tee Start – First Tee Time 6:30 AM

Friday, September 8 – Far Oaks  $32  Shotgun Start – 8:00 AM

ST L METRO SR Div 1 Date SCH Rev 7-10-17