Golf Channel has this show called The Haney Project Ray Romano featuring Tiger Woods' swing coach Hank Haney and comedian Ray Romano of Everybody Loves Raymond fame. Haney is confident he can help Romano achieve his goal of breaking 80 before the season ends. I told my golf buddy today this ain't going to happen, and here's the math behind it.
Romano claims to be a 15-18 handicapper. The odds of 15-18 scoring 79 ranges from 1 in 1,138 to 1 in 37,000. On a typical course (say 71 rating/125 slope) Romano would need a net differential of 8-10 to score 79. Base on this USGA chart the odds of that happening are not good.
I think the biggest misconception about the golf handicap index is it represents some kind of average or typical score. But you only shoot to your index 20% of the time. So if Romano's index is 15 he scores 87 only 20% of the time. If Romano averaged 87 then breaking 80 wouldn't be that big of a deal. But when he only scores 87 20% of the time taking 8 strokes off (even for just a single round) becomes very unlikely.
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