COMMUNITY

That's very strange that YOU are getting that communication since you're not the club chairman. I am co-chair of the Philadelphia Area #013 Club and we have gotten emails from the USGA about the same things. We are an ACTIVE club unlike 95% of the clubs on this site who USHandicap just assigned a club chair (in many cases, years ago) and that club chair is nowhere to be found any longer. It should get very interesting to see what happens with the great majority of clubs on this site as most all of them hold ZERO club events for their members.

Without the required info from the chairman of your club, I'm afraid your club will no longer be USGA compliant and all of it's club members will no longer have a handicap.

You have USHandicap to thank for assigning club chairmen years ago without a plan for what to do when the chairman goes AWOL. Nor did they give the club chairs specific instructions on how a club should be run. They just baited them into taking the position in exchange for a free handicap for the club chair. Read through some of the other club home pages and you'll find that USHandicap is posting to them desperately looking for people to volunteer for the chair position because they know that thousands of people may soon be losing their handicaps due to being in a club that didn't provide that info needed by the USGA.

The proverbial sh*t will hit the fan in 2018. Should be interesting to see how this site will handle the firestorm or if they will just keep everyone's $30 and fold in the middle of the night.

The USGA put out an announcement that there is someone scamming people and acting like they are the USGA.

Don hit the nail on the head as usual.

I think that we - the members who participate - are disappointed in what seems like USHandicap's lack of interest in the product they peddle. Type 3 clubs (what we all are in) have very specific requirements for players but they are not out of line in any way - minimum of 3 rounds with another player from the club and attend one club sponsored event or tournament. I'm a chair for 2 Type 3 clubs and I'm probably dropping USHandicap club chair responsibilities because TheGrint has a clear development cycle and I have a bit of inside info on what they are planning for these compliance things. I do know that my Grint club has over 1000 members, but TheGrint automatically marks members who do not have 3 attested scores as inactive. No idea how USHandicap works that, but .. it doesn't look like they do.

USH once had the edge. Other up-and-coming systems will soon beat them and they will have to stop collecting because they can't facilitate clubs with chairs who meet the requirements. Our disappointment has turned into frustration.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.golfd..

Thank you everyone for info! I can’t even remember how I joined this particular handicap service, or got assigned to the Seattle Club 126 (address I assume), but really like the system. Not into it for the camaraderie of a club, but rather to conveniently maintain stats and history of courses played over time. I’m not sure how one even communicates with the entire membership of a particular club chapter. Is there a way to do that?

Alternatively, is there a way to download ones playing history and export it to another site?

You were put in your club based on your zip code and the club's zip code.

To communicate with others in your club, click on someone from the list of names, click on a name at it will bring up their profile. You'll see a send message button on the right hand side of their profile. To post to the club page, scroll below the names and enter a comment.

Not sure of a way to download your scoring history but you can print it out and enter them in a new system. It's only the most recent 20 rounds that matter anyway.

Nick

I'd be interested to see how this shakes out. Your club chair hasn't been active on the site since 2014 so technically your club is in default and probably won't be considered active unless someone else steps up and completes the USGA requirements for Chairman.

There are probably 100s of "clubs" here like that.

If you want to keep a USGA sanctioned handicap, you may consider postulating for Chairperson of your club or switching to a more active system like TheGrint.

I am the club chairman for Tampa area #247 as I have been from the beginning. I have been contacted by the USGA several times over the years to keep current in training and "test" taking to maintain the club. I also have received the USGA new requirements. I have corresponded with Cindy at USGA and she has been helpful. I went ahead and used my address and phone number for the "required" application which keeps everything good until 2019 when there will be an additional fee for legal handicap services. I have received no guidance from US Handicap.

I have run the Milwaukee club since 2009. The last 3 years i get an email from usga instructing me to take handicap class and take test. Which i do. The usga wants more control of handicaps so they are now trying to close as many false or inactive handicapped groups as possible.

And this site is a primary reason why the USGA is moving forward with closing/disqualifying clubs. USHandicap's idea was great...for USHandicap's bank account. Just setup clubs around the country, take a volunteer to run the club and USHandicap just rakes in memberships for handicaps at $30 a pop. Now that the USGA is cracking down on defunct clubs due to them not keeping up with club requirements, you have USHandicap scrambling to find people to run the clubs. A few will survive but the great majority of them will be filled with pissed off members who don't understand what happened.

Now if the great majority of clubs will close and the money stops coming in for USHandicap's revenue, what do you think will happen to this site? I've been saying it for a while now. One day we are going to wake up and this site will be completely gone along with all the clubs. Be prepared, get/keep your club compliant. If you don't move yourself to another compliant club separate from this site then have a backup plan to continue the club outside of here. Have emails and phone numbers of all the members (particularly the ones that care and participate in events) and have a website designed for the new club you'll have to use when this one is gone.

As much as I am dissatisfied with US Handicap, they had a good idea, but they didn't create good management interfaces for the club chairs.

The idea of using an online site to create "Type 3" clubs and calculate handicaps that are USGA compliant is good. They saw a need at the time, and filled the need. The problem was that GHIN was and still is primarily exclusive to local green grass facilities. Their system worked, but didn't do much more than give you a number so for what most clubs charged - $45 to $65 for annual GHIN, $30/yr or even less if you have a 3 year was a good deal.

The USGA requirements for a Type 3 club were straightforward - so easy to implement in an online system. I'm an ops guy, and I could probably create a database schema and write decent SQL queries to return enough for a club chair to know who was active, who met the 3 attested rounds with another club member, and who attended at least one event with an interface to manage the events. US Handicap knew these requirements yet failed to build an interface to facilitate that for club chairmen.

It would be unfair to say definitively, but if I knew that there was a way for club Chairs to remove members who did not meet those qualifications, or even better - automatically invalidate the handicaps of those who didn't meet those qualifications, why would I write code to stop revenue? Is that why US Handicap didn't build that part (which should have been a requirement since USGA made it a requirement)? I don't know, but it seems plausible.

I think my frustration with US Handicap is that they took the time and effort to build a pretty decent system - one that issues handicaps, has clubs, forums for people to get mad at each other, and all kinds of pretty good stuff. They ceased development on it at least 4 years ago and it has not aged very well. I don't know the owners, but I've submitted several issues via support tickets and they don't fix them or take 4+ months to 'fix' something that would take me (who doesn't write ASP code) less than 20 minutes to debug and fix - primarily because I'd have to look up syntax for ASP.

Frankly, I'm glad USGA has started cracking down on illegitimate handicaps. It'll make US Handicap crap or get off the pot. By the response I've seen to simple issues that need to be fixed, I'd say you'd be hard pressed to find a turd squeeze out.

Now.. as far as I know, our clubs are *OUR* clubs. They *DO NOT* belong to US Handicap because they are issued by the local associations and managed by the chairperson(s). If you - the chairperson - wants to move your club to another handicap calculation system, you have every right to do that. Your membership would need to switch and get logins, etc.. but you could take your entire club to TheGrint or another service and I don't believe there is anything US Handicap could do.