Hi David,
That's a fascinating experiment. There would have to be an impact from ham and egging though with the format that you chose. I suspect the best 2 out of 4 helped you a lot more than it helped the pros. I would expect that if you took the combined scores of all the pros and compared them with the combined scores of your group (on the 2nd two days) that they would have beaten you fairly handily. For precisely the reason discussed below:
Tom - I expect that the ranges of scores of the pros would be lower than the scratches. The pros might occasionally throw in a 62, but they'd rarely go over 72 and the bulk of their scores would be in the 66-69 range. The scratches might chuck up a 67-69 (off the white tees), but they could also throw out the odd high 70s score as well. I would think their scores would range from around 69 up to 75 most of the time. The measure there is the "anti-handicap" or the average of the worst 10 of your last 20 differentials. Back in I think 2006, someone calculated Tiger's handicap based on his scores on the PGA tour. It was +8.1. If memory serves, his anti-handicap was +5.3. My index right now is +0.1 and my anti-handicap is 6.9. David might well be more consistent than I have been, but that's a range of 7.0 for me and only 2.8 for Tiger, meaning he is significantly more consistent than I am (or was then anyway).
Another example - Phil Mickelson, who is I think quite inconsistent as pros go, his handicap is on GHIN and right now he's +6.4. His anti-handicap is +2.3, so a range of 4.1.
Curiously David is currently 1.0 and his anti-handicap is 4.9, so his range is only 3.9, so he's pretty consistent. No idea about the other guys in his group or indeed, Mr Fowler.
Michael,
You're absolutely right about everything except a couple small things:
1) Our low scores from the whites would all be in the mid-60's. Probably 65 or 66. Maybe a bit lower. I've shot 8-under 64 twice and have posted several 65's and 66's over the years on courses that are considerably tougher, but my best years are definitely behind me. Everyone else in our group is capable of (and has shot) similar scores, some of them even in competition (my low in competition being 66 on a 71.9/128 course). Still, though, on a course of only 6,010 yards, 69.7/128, we could all definitely shoot in the mid 60's when the conditions were a bit warmer and the fairways a bit more "friendly" than they are in the winter at Bear Creek.
This time of year our low scores would probably be closer to 67, though, so you're not far off.
2) I'm currently a 1.0, but that's typically as high as I get in any month. I may go up to a 1.2 or 1.3, but that's during the winter, and then when we head into the season, my index will get back into the +1.0 to +2.0 range. I only say that for full disclosure's sake. On another thread on a different website, some guys were getting mad at me because I said we were all "scratch golfers," when in reality we all pretty much live in the + range for 6 - 8 months of the year. He said that made a big difference as to how he would have handicapped the match. One other player in our group has played in 10 USGA Championships, and another played some mini-tour golf for a few years, so we're all a bit better than the average scratch player, but at our advancing ages, certainly not much better.
You're dead on about the "anti-handicap" thing. I'm typically very consistent, as are two of the others in our group. One of the guys, though, definitely has a higher "anti-handicap" than the rest of us, and the pros certainly have very close anti-handicaps to their actual handicaps, I'm sure (that's one of the (many) reasons that allows them to play for a living -- their amazing consistency).
Finally, you're also spot on about the best two of four balls favoring us. If we had played a straight 4 balls vs. 4 balls match, we would have gotten beaten fairly handily. I think with a couple more times of playing them, though, we all would have settled down a bit a played more consistently, making even that match fairly close, but with the pros definitely having an advantage (75/25? 80/20?). We did definitely play a bit more "aggressive" golf due to the match's format, and I'm not sure they pros played much differently than normal because I think they may have had some bets within their group that they had to pay attention to, though I'm not certain about that.
Regardless, it was an absolute BLAST to play them, and we can't wait for a re-match!