Sandbagging?!
April 26th, 2010
The dictionary definition of sandbagging is;
transitive verb
1: to bank, stop up, or weight with sandbags2 a: to hit or stun with or as if with a sandbag b: to treat unfairly or harshly c: to coerce by crude means <are raiding the Treasury and sandbagging the government — C. W. Ferguson> d: to conceal or misrepresent one’s true position, potential, or intent especially in order to take advantage ofintransitive verb: to hide the truth about oneself so as to gain an advantage over another.
We all know this guy. He seems to have the most credit on the books but you never read his name in the local paper. Maybe he struggles real bad when you play your weekly “dime-a-point” game, but always seems to be toward the top come tournament time. Or even worse, he is the best player in your group, but carries the highest handicap.
This guy is the sandbagger!
Every year Golf Digest, and others, run an issue on the odds of beating your handicap on a given day. The numbers would stagger you. On average, most odds makers say you should shoot right about 3 shots over your handicap most of the time because handicaps are built on a standard bell curve. The odds of beating your handicap by more than 2 strokes at any given time are slim, but plausible. The odds of beating your handicap by, say 8 strokes or so, are astronomical (about 1138 to 1). Count the number of rounds you play in a year and divide 1100 by that number. For me it would be once in every 8 years or so.
The problem is that it seems to happen to others FAR more frequently. They are in your group, or maybe they are you. The guy that goes into every tournament in the second flight as a 15 and somehow finishes in the top 2 or 3 in the first flight. He is a sandbagger, plain and simple. No 15 handicap should be able to compete right with a 6 for a period of time. I can see a one day tournament where the 6 handicap plays average to poor and the 15 handicap has that once in a lifetime day and it is close, but over 2, 3 or 4 days, NO CHANCE!
Truth be told, they are only hurting their own golf games. Competing against those that are a weaker level than yourself will teach you nothing about your own game. Do you see Lebron James go play pick up games against high school kids? Does Roger Federer comb the colleges to find opponents to “sharpen” his game? Absolutely not! They learn from competing against their peers. They become better by challenging their games with high levels of competition.
Your classic sandbagger doesn’t even know why he does not get any better. He never truly challenges his own game. He is content to cash some credit at the proshop and wonder, alone, why he never gets better than the 16 handicap that he has held for 20 years, even though he is really a 10. He cheats himself and he cheats you. It is time to put this to an end!
I have developed a way to spot the sandbagger in your group. I have a sure fire way, beyond the math that is irrefutable, of outing that guy, I have discovered a way of seeing him for what he is…..Part 2 will give you the tools to see this atrocity and put faces to the labels.