The miss cut penalty should be relative to the scores. Which will always very from tournament to tournament because the course and difficulty will always vary. Sometimes it's an easy course, sometimes it's a very hard course.
There should not be a max penalty. The penalty should be relative to the scores to make it fair and avoid problems like this where people getting cut are getting a BETTER score than what they really shot.
Changing the MC penalty to 15 is not fixing the problem, it's masking it in another form of the same type.
Take a players score who misses the cut, in this case Rory missed the cut shooting a +10, and add a 5 stroke penalty (or 10?), so Rory's score for this challenge is +15.
Vijay shot +13, plus a +5 MC penalty, Vijay's score would be +18
Luke Donald shot +11, plus a +5 MC penalty, Luke's score is +16
Lets say at a different tournament the cut line is +2. And I'll hypothetically use the same people above.
Rory missed the cut shooting a +4, and add a 5 stroke penalty, so Rory's score for this challenge is +9
Vijay shot +6, plus a +5 MC penalty, Vijay's score would be +11
Luke Donald shot +5, plus a +5 MC penalty, Luke's score is +10
The missed cut penalty should not be a solid stroke number everyone shares. It should be a number added to the scores that a person shoots. This way there will never be a scenario where a person will be given a better score for missing the cut (like there is now). Also, by adding to the score of those who missed the cut, the MC penalty and final score is relative to the tournament scores and the field.
Now in the case that someone makes the cut and ends up bombing the final 2 days... well then that's their score. If Tiger woods makes the cut shooting even where the cut line is +2. And on the final two days he shoots +5 and +8. And he ends with a score of +13, then so be it, that's what he shot, that is what he earned. There is no need to sugar coat a player for playing terrible just because he made the cut. If you play terrible you should be accounted for that. Even though it's a higher score than those who missed the cut,it shouldn't matter now. Those who missed they cut got penalized already. If you want to increase the +5 to +10 for those who missed than go for it, but if someone bombs the last 2 days after making the cut, that must not be sugar coated, and it must be reflected on the scores. There should be no max for those who do make the cut. You play bad, you score bad. That's golf.
That's how I would do it to avoid problems and to make it fair. Pretty simple. Someone can complain that there person that made the cut got a worse score than a person who missed the cut, but if your player plays that terrible, than you should have a worse score. I mean seriously, why would someone be rewarded for playing horrible? If you play horrible you should score horrible.
This post was edited by MrMoJoRising on Jun 17 2012 11:11am