FogBow modules
Nine modules. Each one answers a question your committee has argued about without evidence.
Every module reads the calibration, so the report comes first — then you take the modules that matter to you. Most clubs start with 2 or 3.
The exhibits below are the worked example from Harrow Bend Golf Club, one of the invented clubs in FogBow’s sample reports. The figures are illustrative. Your own numbers will differ, and some of them will be duller.
Handicap integrity screen
Is a member’s competition golf different from the golf their Index predicts?
Of 178 members with enough competition golf to test, 4 reached the threshold. The club’s own average gap is +0.05 strokes, and that is what each golfer is measured against.
Evidence of the kind Rule 7.1a(i) contemplates, for the committee that owns the decision. FogBow does not generate Handicap Index adjustments; the USGA Handicap Review Tool is the only authorised tool for that.
Competition fairness audit
Do the club’s own allowances produce an even contest?
Net scoring differs across Index bands well beyond chance — 1.68 strokes between the best-served band and the worst. Where a tilt shows up it usually traces back to the rating, not the allowance.
Maintenance impact
What does aerification cost the membership, and for how long?
The course plays 1.12 strokes harder in the first 3 days and is back inside 0.1 of a stroke by day 10. The useful half is the recovery, not the first morning.
Setup consistency
Is Saturday a different golf course from Tuesday?
0.34 strokes across the week, which is a clean bill of health — and worth having in writing the next time somebody insists the greens were unplayable on the morning they played.
Tee-set fit
Are members playing tees that fit the golf they actually play?
25 of 435 member-and-tee combinations score more than 2 strokes worse than their peers from the same tee. Most could move forward without any change to the card.
The comparison is made within the tee played, so this measures fit rather than the possibility that the course as a whole is under-rated.
Hole locations
Which pin sheets are decorative, and which ones bite?
1.26 strokes a round between the club’s hardest sheet and its easiest. The output is per hole and per sheet, so it identifies the positions worth saving for a competition.
Monitoring index
What did the course play this year, once the weather is taken out?
The course played +0.85 strokes harder as scored; +0.62 of that survives once wind, rain and green speed are removed. Control limits say which months are worth asking about.
This is the one that runs every year, and the reason a second year is worth buying. Build the baseline in the first engagement, before anybody asks for it.
Renovation before and after
Did the capital project change what it was meant to change?
The rebuilt holes play 0.126 strokes harder each against the untouched holes — 0.63 a round. A placebo cut a year before the project returns −0.002, which is what a clean design should return.
The untouched holes are the control. For a club midway through a multi-phase project the answer arrives in time to change the next phase.
Pace of play
Where does the queue form, and what makes it worse?
The clearest bottleneck runs 5.9 minutes above what its par would suggest, and every 10 extra players on the course adds 4.9 minutes to the average round.
The module most often blocked by data. A club without timing records cannot buy it, which is worth establishing at the scoping call.
Why a second year is worth buying
The first report carries the large findings, and large findings do not repeat. What the following year buys is M7 refreshed against the new season, the calibration re-estimated on it, and a stated answer to the only question a board really asks: is the course drifting, and was it us or the weather?
That only works if the baseline was built the first time. It is included in the first engagement whether or not anybody asks for it, so that both years are computed the same way.
Why this comes from outside the club
Green chairs serve 2 or 3 years. Head professionals and their assistants move on. Superintendents move. Every rotation takes with it the club’s memory of why things are the way they are, and the next committee reopens a settled question with nothing but opinion to settle it again.
The measurement does not rotate. It is made the same way every year, by somebody who does not work for the club, does not sell it equipment, and is not being assessed by the result. A finding about green speed from inside the building is also a finding about somebody’s own work. From outside, it is just a finding.
That is the argument for a baseline rather than a report: the golf course outlives everyone who currently has an opinion about it, and so should the record of how it played.
Read the sample report