Do You Influence with Info?

I have been working on a the last couple of months looking into adjusting a few players' handicaps on the Omega Tour to reflect more their known ability.  This would take place starting with the new 2017 Season in January.

After careful and many discussions, the Board and I decided after research and evaluation, that the Fargo Ratings are the best way to go.

I had been losing sleep over all the complaints about certain players and wanted to do something about it, and using the Fargo Ratings is the way to go.  Every person the Board considered moving up did indeed move up when we looked at the cut-offs for the handicaps for the Fargo Ratings compared to the Omega Tour.  It was quite remarkable.

And as one player told me,

"Players will complain about anything. But the biggest complaint I always heard about the handicapping for Omega before was that there wasn't a set methodology to determining a players handicap.  Now there is, so it'll come down to them whining about Fargo and not the decision makers on the tour.  There are some people who moved around but I think overall they were all moves in the right direction."

I had known about this new change (using Fargo Ratings) and had a lot of background information provided by Mike Page of FargoRate and was ready to announce this but wanted to wait until after the Season Finale so we could flush a few more things out and get some graphics that explained well the system/criteria.

But there I was Sunday morning of the Omega looking around the room and saw a few key players that I knew would be moving up come January.

I knew I wouldn't say anything to them, but I DID wonder what effect that would have had on them?  Would they have be consumed that they were going up in Jan and in-consequence not perform that well by being distracted by the news?  Or, would the info propel them to try even harder this one last event at a lower ranking?  (that's pressure in itself, tho, and can back-fire)

One player told me after he finished the tourney that he things it will push him harder to do well being ranked higher (as he knows he needed to be moved up).

Still - interesting, huh?

Such a mental game!  And I didn't want to affect the players in any way with the new news.