As I said twice, players should always hand their cards in.OK, but that is where I am trying to get to. What are clubs going to do. Ignore one or 2 NRs. Start taking action after 3 or more. Or, do they have other boundaries? Will some clubs formally warn players immediately after 1 NR, if there is no good reason for it. In my experience, most NRs are simply because a player has had a bad day, or even a bad hole, and lost their head and given up. I doubt England Golf would deem that an acceptable reason to give up on scoring. Even if they hand in their card, they've still left the last number of holes unplayed and blank, so no one would ever really know how they would have scored. Our last 5 holes are pretty easy, and you often see people who have had bad days finish on a little nice run of pars and even birdies.Also, I referenced "a competition" and "a bad day", not "repeatedly".
I appreciate many club golfers simply go out for fun, and feel it is perfectly OK to give up if they have a bad day. But, as a volunteer, I have no doubt committed hundreds of hours of my life getting into handicapping, sorting new members out, conducting reviews, communicating with members, etc. I now look to the future, and see there could be a lot more chasing and deciding what to do when a player NRs. A worry that really did not exist under CONGU. So, forgive me if I get a little bit frustrated when I've to spend even more time sorting out players who have not fulfilled their limited and simple responsibilities under the rules of handicapping, whilst causing me and others on the Committee extra work in sorting their scoring record out because they couldn't be bothered.
But, my frustrations are balanced by the fact that I certainly do not want golfers feeling they are under pressure to continue playing when they are mentally done. As a Committee member I want golfers to be buzzing about all aspects of the club, and to feel under no pressure to do things against their wishes. I certainly didn't join the Committee because I wanted to piss golfers off, I joined as I wanted to make a positive difference.
So, I'd love to know what other clubs will be doing, so that we are not overly tough, or accused of being too lenient. We want to be as fair as possible. Last time we had a competition when the weather was dodgy, 10 golfers NRed. Should someone make a subjective call and say "weather was pretty bad, let them off this time", or should the 10 players be reminded they shouldn't do this, or even tougher actions taken, especially if any of these players have NRed 2 or 3 times in the recent past?
I certainly think it would be a failure if we simply do nothing, because I'm guessing there is usually at least one NR in most competitions. Most of those because a player has given up rather than being injured. So, if we did nothing then we'd need to resolve those NRs every round. Unless the system did it for us, which I'm unsure it will as it will not know the circumstances why the NR occured.
