Let me guess - the SSS at your course is too low as well

A club I played at recently have flown in the face of golfing fashion and actually shortened their course.

Strange, I know, even when it turns out that it's only one hole that's been chopped and the reasons for doing so are both sound and logical.

The hole in question runs parallel to the one before it and the back tee of the former was fairly tight against the green of the latter.

On competition days, this proximity was inevitably leading to delays - not to mention the danger of a wayward approach taking out the group in front.

What's more, a pair of large trees some 280 yards from the back tee makes an aggressive drive if not impossible then certainly foolhardy, so it's not as though trimming 30 yards or so from its previously 400-yard-plus length was going to ruin the hole.

So far so good. I understand the club in question did look into any possible ramifications when it came to their standard scratch score (SSS) and were told they'd be OK.

But having made the change official and had their course re-measured, they were shocked to be informed by the English Golf Union (EGU) that their SSS would be going down a shot as a result.

Cue: lots of disgruntled members.

Now, I'm not about to delve into the murky world of how SSSs are set or adjusted. (Though I would say that, in my experience, the slope rating system devised by the United States Golf Association (USGA) that is their equivalent to standard scratch seems to result in American handicaps being a good couple of shots more generous than ours. I think a 10-handicap over there is more like a 13 or 14 by our standards.)

But I couldn't help thinking that this was a refrain I'd heard before at other courses where par exceeds the standard scratch by at least a couple of shots.

Because everyone believes their standard scratch is too low. And there's always a club down the road where one of their mates plays.

Here, they'd have you believe, generosity knows no bounds and the standard scratch is more like a couple over par despite being a much easier track.

If we all played there, they say, we'd all be off at least a couple of shots lower.

Of course they would.

Everyone believes their own course is more fiendish than any other. Yes, it might be shorter than some, they concede (hence the low SSS), but what about the out-of-bounds that comes into play on six holes? What about the 10th having eight bunkers? Or the 12th green with contours so subtle that even after 30 years they're impossible to read?

Not to mention the greenkeeper who doesn't seem to believe in cutting rough and the fact it's particularly exposed so wind is more of factor. And so on.

Occasionally, the members may have a point. There are, no doubt, more than a few courses scattered about where an extra shot really should be added.

But that, surely, is what the Competition Standard Scratch (CSS) is for, isn't it? To reflect that scores on a given day have generally been higher or usual than normal.

And if they're still not convinced, I'd like to see them try maintaining a handicap at somewhere like Carnoustie, routinely regarded as the hardest course in these isles and one of a very select band where the SSS is set at three over par.

Let me put it this way. I sincerely doubt the handicap they currently maintain at a 6,200-yard parkland haven would be lower when they finally returned home.

As for the course with its shortened hole and subsequent SSS reduction, maybe they were just too honest.

Maybe they should simply have stuck the white pots next to the yellows for regular medals and the knockouts, using the back tee in question only a couple of times a year in scratch competitions.

No-one would have been any the wiser, would they? Or would the standard scratch police have sent a crack unit to expose and punish such devious chicanery...

by Dan Murphy