Does Stableford Scoring Favour Long Hitters

Played in my first society competition of the year on Wednesday.  I was drawn with two longish hitters who were both capable of of out hitting me by at least 50 yards.  The course we played was relatively short and on the front nine had lots of water and a number of the holes had an out of bounds running down one side of the hole. 

Both of my playing partners had two nightmare holes.  One recorded a 9 and 12 and the other blobbed twice having taken 8 shots and not reached the green.  All these holes started with wild drives out of bounds and two of them were followed up by hitting water on the three off the tee shot.  Two of the scores also included lost balls that sailed off onto other holes.  My worst score was an 8 on the par 5 first and was the only hole I did not score points on. I trundled nearly every tee shot 200-220 down the centre of the fairway and only hit water once as the result of a poor short approach. 

At the end of the round I lost by 1 point to one of these players and beat the other by two as we scored 36, 35 and 33.  However I estimated that I beat both of them easily on stroke play. One by 9 strokes and the other by 6 plus however many strokes it would have taken him to complete the two blobbed holes.

I've always realised that stableford is designed to forgive erractic scoring but I wondered whether anyone else had noticed that long hitters are the chief beneficaries or was this just a quirk of this particular day?

If I could trundle the ball down the fairway 220 yds I would call myself a long hitter.

John, I guess its all comparative.   One chap I was playing with hit an 8 iron out of a fairway bunker about 150 yards onto the green. Trundle was not the best choice of words but was supposed to indicate my low flight pedestrian driving that get to where they finish in a very unimpressive way.

I did come second in the longest drive competition (only 7 players).  I was beaten by the last player to drive as the other five all missed the fairway.  Almost

There are many strong young men these days who hit the ball a very long way, I play with one quite regularly and what he does to golf ball from the tee is almost indecent, but when he gets wayward he has a terrible time playing to his handicap,

You have learned that keeping it straight helps to be consistent and only one blob was testament to that fact.  Keep it up, Jon.

Just goes to prove that you don't need to be a big hitter Jon.  I'm strong enough (but no longer young!) to be able to hit a drive 250+yds I reckon.  However, this year I've slowed my swing down a lot and still manage 200 - 210 on a regular basis, but I'm hitting 50 to 60% of fairways as opposed to 10% before.  Now all I need to do now is hit the greens....

You really are an amazing player, Steven with the ability to hit a four iron 220 yds, you don't need woods at all.

Well, Jamie and Jonathan, I'm afraid I just cannot relate to those kind of distances, I must be well past my sell by date. Tell him to ditch the driver completely, then he should get his handicap down.