By popular request, UDisc Leagues now supports handicap scoring! Run a singles event on a Smart Layout to unlock automatically-calculated handicaps for your league. Handicap scoring will help to give players of all skill levels a fair chance to compete.
Why can’t we run our series standings based on the handicaps rather than raw score? Not using the handicap defeats the purpose of providing us with the handicap as we still have to put the scores back into our spreadsheet to calculate proper standings.
Thank you for this feedback, James! Our team has heard this from a handful of leagues that use UDisc for standings points now, and it’s something we are considering for a follow-up development effort. We will keep you in the loop!
Thanks for your thoughtful message, Jeff! Advanced league events are not supported in the current version of handicap scoring on UDisc, so you wouldn’t be able to configure handicaps for a league event using pools (different divisions assigned to different layouts). However, you can use divisions for a handicap scoring event, which will give you a division-based leaderboard view in addition to a combined handicap-adjusted leaderboard view.
Some leagues have created multiple events on the same day to run handicap scoring across different layouts, so this would be a creative solution. You could for example create a Pro event on the long layout, and an Am event on the med/short layout. They could both be handicap scoring events, or even if you’re running both events through the same league, you could run the Amateur event with handicap scoring and the Pro event with just raw total number of strokes. I hope this helps!
My league has manual handicaps. I personally have faith the formula for handicaps is sensible, but the lack of transparency is a hard sell for most in my league. The blog post helps, but it’s a little abstract. We’ve been using a manual method of “older than 40, -1” and “pro, +1”, for example. We’ll not be using this feature, not this season at least.
Our hope as that we’d be able to assign score adjustments to qualifying members in the league based on our merits.
I’ve suggested this in a previous posts.
We do appreciate the update, and I continue to sing Udisc’s praises in the field.
Thank you for your honest feedback, Graham! Is there any particular aspect of the math for which you’d want more transparency for clarification on how the UDisc handicap calculations work?
Think we’ll have to play at least 5 events worth of league to have a better sense. I’d like to see how the handicap is displayed for players. I’ll follow up here next month.
Good question Graham! The players are all playing the same holes as each other for a given event, but the league may rotate to different courses and layouts week-to-week. And there might be different players in the field each week, so players could have varied historical courses and layouts played. There’s some underlying math which is related to players’ past performance and hole difficulty that calculates a projected score for each player’s round, and that projection is related to their handicap. Some players might excel on shorter wooded courses for example, whereas other big arms might score better in the wide open bomber-style courses. The handicap math model is designed to adjust for individual players’ strengths and how they apply their abilities on different unique styles of disc golf courses.
For example, my handicap might be a -2 from the blue layout, and a -5 from the gold layout at the same course. And if the league hosts an event at a different course altogether, especially if it’s much different in difficulty or length, then I may have a totally significantly handicap for that league event. I hope this helps!
Hello, wondering if there is a way to cap the handicap at a certain number. Like our league uses -24 as the largest handicap number. Is there a way to set it as such? Thanks for any feedback help, and we are big fans of the new handicap option!
So the Handicap System has been a huge hit in my clubs weekly, and from the TD standpoint its amazing. But is there a way to view updated Handicaps with out having guys check in?
It would be cool to see the Udisc Rating and handicap in the members portion of the league
Glad you’re enjoying handicap scoring & thanks for this feedback, @worm952! Would love to know more about how you might use a player’s competition rating if it were displayed here - would you want to use this for grouping players as the league admin? How else might you use this information before an event?
I agree with Worm. My group plays with handicap, and while winning the week is the primary goal, there’s another competition for who can keep the lowest handicap. That’s info they’re looking for as soon as the round ends.
Would It be possible to ether add a tab on the pubic League page or where its already counting the number of players to have a list of players and stats there?
Also seeing the members that are signed up for a league might help increase the number of players
(oh so and so play in this league i have to get in now)
Neat idea, Alex! As for player stats, are you thinking this is a good place to show the competition rating for the players in a league, or are there other player stats that you’d be interested in reviewing there also? Would the player stats section be used for a particular purpose that you are thinking of, or more just a point of curiosity and to draw more interest to the league?
How about any of the math? How about all the math? We were using discgolf scene .8 multiplier 3/5 rounds and that’s ok. Last year to create a playoff bracket used a spreadsheet and used 2 std dev on best 10 rounds to set the handicap. The latter solution created more dynamic and realistic handicaps.
No one is going to be on board with using a handicap they cannot independently calculate.
@worm952 and @pilotwhoknits totally understand wanting to know what’s under the hood from a player and league admin perspective. Because this system is a dynamic model, it’s not as simple as an equation. Here’s a bit of an explanation though on how things work:
Handicaps for your league are generated using a three-step process.
First, billions of scores recorded by nearly a million players on hundreds of thousands of holes are used to determine the scoring characteristics (overall difficulty and scoring spread) of all the holes in the UDisc course directory*. This process takes into account player skill level, so a course won’t be
considered very difficult just because it’s mostly played by beginners.
Next, scores from only your league are compared to each hole’s scoring
characteristics to determine each league member’s skill level.
Finally, for your upcoming league round, player skill levels are combined with each hole’s scoring characteristics on the chosen layout to generate an expected score for each player. The player’s handicap is a certain percentage
of the difference between their expected score and par. > This is a league-specific percentage, usually between 85% and 100%, used to provide as equal a chance as possible for all players to place well on the leaderboard, regardless of skill level. This percentage is set based on your league-specific characteristics.
*Holes on smart layouts only. Holes which haven’t been played enough times for UDisc to be confident in their scoring characteristics are considered to be typical holes for their distance.
There’s a bit more information in this FAQ as well. Really appreciate you all weighing in on this, and your feedback thus far!
