Trying to understand what stroke indexes are about

I have been whinging on about this for a few months and I am going to continue to do so.

Two of my columns this year have been about stroke indexes -- the numbers that supposedly indicate the difficulty of each hole and who gives what shots in matchplay and how stableford points are determined.

The problem I have is that world golf governing body The R&A recommends that stroke indexes for one nine of holes are odd numbers and even numbers for the other nine.

That, in my book, is unnecessary manipulation.

The R&A also recommends that the stroke one hole is not amongst the last few holes.

Once again that, in my book, is unnecessary manipulation.

I can understand what The R&A is trying to achieve.

The odd and even numbers system is trying to spread the stroke indexes and avoiding a situation where a lot of shots in a matchplay event could all come together.

But I don't have a problem with that.

Let's take an extreme example. Let us assume that the last five holes are the course's toughest holes and should carry strokes indexes of 1-5.

But under recommendations from The R&A they would have to be either 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 or 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10. That makes no sense to me.

Also The R&A recommends that the stroke one index hole should not be near the end of a round.

Once again I understand what The R&A is trying avoid -- which is a matchplay event being concluded before reaching the stroke one hole.

But in my book, if hole No 18 is the hardest then it should be the stroke one hole.

The trouble with all this manipulation of stroke indexes is we hardly ever play exactly to our handicap. The difficulty of a hole is more likely to dictate what we score rather than a manipulated stroke index.

I thought golf courses around the world were following The R&A recommendations but a recent golf trip to Sydney quashed those thoughts.

I played three courses in Sydney -- Muirfield, The Coast and Eastlakes -- and none of them followed The R&A's recommendations.

All three courses had a mixture of odd and even stroke index numbers for each nine -- the holes were simply rated to their difficulty.

But even more surprising is that all three clubs carried a completely different set of stroke indexes for matchplay as compared with stableford.

I have seen this before at other clubs in Australia and the stroke indexes for matchplay are basically the same at every course.

For example the matchplay stroke indexes are:

First nine: 18, 8, 12, 3, 14, 6, 10, 1 and 16.

Second nine: 5, 11, 2, 15, 7, 13, 4, 17 and 9.

I find that odd, very odd.

Surely the stroke index should indicate the difficulty of a hole? Nothing else.