How to Spot a Sandbagger: Nine Tells From the Help Desk

Yorkshire here. I work in IT, which means I spend most of my day listening to people explain that they didn't touch anything and it just stopped working. So I know a cover story when I hear one.

Golf is full of them. Philander asked me to write down how I spot a sandbagger, presumably so he can avoid doing any of these things. Here they are, in roughly the order they tend to show up.

1. The handicap arrives with an apology

Ask a normal golfer his handicap and he tells you a number. Ask a sandbagger and you get a short story. "It says 18, but I've been playing like a 24, my back's been bad, and I haven't touched a club since August."

If the number needs a disclaimer, the number is doing something it shouldn't.

2. The warm-up is suspiciously good

He's hitting a lovely little draw on the range. Crisp contact. Same flight every time. Then on the first tee he tops one forty yards and says "typical."

Nobody's range session is that disconnected from their golf. Mine isn't, and my range session is terrible.

3. The bag doesn't match the story

A man who claims to be a 22 and carries a bag full of blade irons with worn grooves in a coin-sized patch dead centre of the face is not a 22. The grooves don't lie. They've been hit properly thousands of times, by somebody.

4. He knows the rules a bit too well

Your average high handicapper has a working knowledge of the rules that runs out somewhere around "the ball's in the water, I'll drop one." The sandbagger can quote the relief options for a ball on a cart path from memory, including which side gives him the better lie.

People don't learn that much about a system they aren't using.

5. The bad holes are very bad, and very convenient

Everyone has a blow-up hole. But the sandbagger's blow-ups have a pattern. They happen on holes where he isn't getting a shot, in casual rounds, when the card is going in. In the club competition, oddly enough, the wheels stay on.

In IT we'd call that an intermittent fault that only appears when nobody important is watching. I've never once found one of those that was genuinely random.

6. He goes quiet when it's going well

The genuine 20-handicapper who finds himself level through six can't keep it in. He tells you about it. He tells the halfway hut about it. He phones his wife.

The sandbagger goes very quiet, starts talking about how tough the back nine is, and on the tenth tee announces a sore wrist.

7. The round that never finishes

Speaking of the sore wrist. Watch for rounds that get abandoned at precisely the moment they'd become a good score. Rain that only he can feel. A message from work. An unscheduled appointment.

I have been on call for fifteen years and I've never had work ring me on the twelfth tee at the exact moment I was three under my handicap. He has, apparently, several times.

8. He's surprised. Every time.

When a sandbagger wins, he's always astonished. "No idea where that came from." "Best I've hit it in years." "Must be the new putter."

One surprise is lovely. A surprise every spring is a scheduled maintenance window.

9. He's the one telling you to watch out for sandbaggers

The last tell, and the most reliable. The loudest voice in the bar about other people's handicaps is often the one with the most to protect. It's misdirection, and it's very effective, mostly because the rest of us are too polite to say anything.

What to actually do about it

Nothing dramatic. This is a comedy site, and most people in your four-ball are honest, slightly worse than they think, and just happy to be out. If something genuinely looks off, that's what your club's handicap committee is for. Let them look at the scoring record. That's their job, and they've got the data.

Your job is simpler. Play with him, buy him a drink, and make sure he hears you say "great round" at least once a week. It won't fix anything, but he'll know you've noticed.

That's usually enough. Have you tried turning him off and on again?