Our club championship is pretty simple -- 18 hole qualifier, top 15 plus defending champion are seeded into match play. Lots of self-selection for the qualifier--pretty rare to have more than 30 guys play.
Our Member-Guest is tons of fun, though a significant commitment of time. Weds afternoon is an optional practice round (followed by a stag dinner). For the actual event, six-team groups are flighted by combined handicaps. 5 nine-hole round-robin matches are played, after which the groups get seeded for the sixth nine-hole match (with 1 v 2, 3 v 4, etc. playing). Winner of each flight then plays in a shootout. For Thurs and Fri the field is split so that half the field plays Thursday morning and Friday afternoon, with the other half playing Thurs afternoon and Fri morning. That keeps play moving nicely and let's people spend parts of Thursday and Friday in the office if they need. Saturday is slow, but you know that going in. Lots of people seem to
consider it one of the more enjoyable member-guests in the area.
Carl, do you get any griping from the 4,5,6 seeds in for the 6th match? Essentially, they've already played crappy golf for two days, do they really want to play nine more holes that don't mean anything? Also, if a calcutta is running, wouldn't the 4th seed have have a vested interest in tanking if they own any part of the third seed, lapping the 1 & 2 seed?
Ben:
No, for two reasons. First, the 4, 5, and 6 teams know that they have only themselves to blame for being in that position. Second, we don't do a calcutta for this event -- the betting is between two-man teams, across flights, based on points earned each day and then in total. (Most teams have $20 bets with other two-man teams -- $5 for the points earned the first day, $5 for the second, $5 for the third, and $5 total.) So Team 6 miight have 30 bets with teams in a bunch of different flights, and to keep from getting completely waxed in all of those bets, wants very much to earn points against Team 5 in that last match -- which, in theory, it has the best chance to beat in that last match.