Best/most popular club tournament formats?

[Scott Coan]

I'm interested to hear about the most popular tournament formats at your Club.  We are trying to inject a bit more "life" into our schedule and I'd love to hear what works out there and why.

Far and away the most popular tournament at my US club was a member-member, match-play, best-ball, round-robin format.  
 
Teams are placed in flights based on players' combined handicaps. Each flight consists of six teams and each team plays its matches within its flight.  

Three 9-hole matches are played on Saturday and two 9-hole matches are played on Sunday. All play is at 70% handicap.  Scoring is based on a Point System: +1 point for each hole won, -1 point for each hole lost, 0 points for halved holes. The maximum number of points a team can win or lose in a 9-hole match are +5 or -5.  Once a match is won the scoring stops, so if you beat a team 4&3 they cannot come back and win more points.

The winner of the tournament is the team with the most points, regardless of flight.  I've heard of other clubs that then hold a shoot-out with all flight winners to decide the overall tournamant champion.  I'm curious to hear from anyone that's used this shoot-out option as we may give this a go this year.

The highlight of this format is the auction that takes place the Friday night prior to the Saturday matches.  All teams are auctioned off to the highest bidder and the bidding can be fast and furious.  If you buy your team and win your flight you can pretty much pay your annual dues in one weekend!

Another reason this format works is that it gives players a chance to play with/against players they may not normally play with.  9-hole matches are also quite cut-throat as there's not much chance for recovery if you lose a couple of holes.  

Thanks for any responses!
Scott

[A_Clay_Man]

Scott, A minor warning that what you described sounds like a calcutta. Its likely frowned upon because it is so much fun.  
 

[Bill_McBride]

Adam, we have a separate tournament that is a Calcutta auction event.  That is fun.  The teams are blind draw four players.  The two lower handicap players play together with another pair, same for the two higher handicap members of the team of four.  The format is best ball full handicap of the four players, so the excitement (??!!) comes from not knowing what the other guys are doing!  My team finished 2nd one year (good payoff) even though my partner made 7 on the short par 4 #1 and I made 6!  We were convinced we were toast until we found out when we met our other guys between #3 and #10 that they had started with net birdies on the first three holes.  Pressure off, we rolled from there on.

We play the same format as Scott's club in our member guest.  That is a great time, five nine hole matches, same scoring format.

Another format we occasionally use for one day summer events (long day) is a 27 hole two man team contest where you play one nine best ball, one nine two man scramble and the third nine alternate shot.  That last is one that can ruin long friendships!  

[Rob_Waldron]

Scott

We use the five 9-hole match format for our Member / Guest. We have ten flights determined by combined handicap. The ten flight winners as well as the two other teams with the most cumulative points advance to the shootout. The twelve teams are divided into two groups of six.

For the shootout we play a three hole loop that returns to the clubhouse: #1 par 4, #17 par 3, and #18 par 4. This allows the non-qualifying teams to follow the playoff in their carts loaded with adult beverages.

The format is medal play, alternate shot using 50% of the combined handicaps with strokes allocated according to the scorecard.

(By the way #17 is a downhill 165 yard par 3 over water. There are numerous wagers made on the number of shots landing on the green as well as in the water.)

Non qualifiers are encouraged to cheer on the team that won their flight because we provide a bonus of $600 that is split among all six teams in the flight of the overall winner.

We also run a pari-mutual prior to the event where players can bet on any team in the field. We pay for Win, Place and Show in the shootout.

The beauty of a pari-mutual as opposed to a calcutta is 1. a pari mutual is legal and a calcutta is not. 2. A pari-mutual allows everyone to bet on anyone pushing down the odds on any well known sand baggers.

I hope this is helpful. We have a great time at our Member / Guest with this format.

[Tony_Chapman]

Scott - Something that we do here is have a "season long" points race in, I want to say 6-8 events during the golf season. You accumulate points for participating, and then cashing. We have three events that are dubbed "Majors" where you get double points.

Then, at the end of the year, we have a Ryder Cup style event where the head and assistant pros get a team based on accumulated points throughout the year. Then matches are played based on handicap, etc. Quite fun.

[Jim_Bick]

We have a  3-day member-member with first day scramble, second day alternate shot and third day one day better ball. The three formats do complement each other in terms of balancing out handicaps differences, etc. Alternate shot keeps the lower handicap teams very much in contention. Since alternate shot is truly "moving day", it keeps teams who had a bad first day interested. If we really had guts we'd play the last day alternate shot, which would probably keep every team in the field at least plausibly alive.

If you have fewer rounds you can shrink to nine holes for two of the formats.

[Michael Kennedy]

Scott,
I really enjoy the match play/point system you describe - you meet many new faces and the format requires an "A" game.  

The thing that bugs me about one particular club which uses this format is that they lump each flight winner (in this case there were ~14 flights) into a derby-style, best ball shootout, with the high handicappers getting 80% of hdcp.  Only a select number of teams move on from each hole.  They work it out so only two teams remain at the last (6th) hole.

From a low hcdp perspective, this format forces the single-digits to make birdie in order to push a 12 hdcp's par (usually one person on the team will scrape out a par).

So the eventual winner is always a ~10 hdcp paired with a 12 hdcp.  I've seen this 4 years running.

I like Rob's idea of medal play in the shootout to determine the overall winner...

[TEPaul]

I probably shouldn't even respond to this because it probably isn't useful but where I come from most everyone seems to want to play 18 hole matches. The only time we ever consider 9 hole matches is for the senior division of a big tournament or if people have already made plane reservations and plans and rather than cancelling the whole thing due to something like a hurricane which we've had about 2 out of the last five years we reformat to nine hole matches just to get fit the thing in around delays and lost time on the course.

[Rob_Waldron]

Scott

One of the most popular member events of the season is a two day tournament using four different 9-hole formats.

Day 1
Front 9: Better Ball of Partners
Back 9: Chapman (Each player drives, then the players switch ball for their second shots. After selecting the best second shot they alternate shots until the ball is holed)

Day 2
Front 9:Two man scramble
Back 9: Aggregate

We award gross and net prizes for each format as well as the overall totals.  

[Scott Coan]

Rob,

I really like the idea of having the medal shootout at the end of the five 9-hole matches and will try and incorporate for this year.  Sounds like a blast. just wish we had a water hole like you described for the side action!!!

Also, I like the concept of playing the different formats that you and Jim mentioned.  Can you shed any light on how you work the handicapping for the different formats?

sc

[Scott Coan]

Tony,

Your "season long" points race is also something I'm interested in as it sounds like it can build quite a bit of interest over the year - exactly what we are looking for.

Any more info on the season ending event?  How many players qualify and how do you format the matches?

THX
sc    

[Tony_Chapman]

Scott - I'll try to explain it the best I can.

We have (best I can recall from last year) eight events that we keep points for as follows (this is the Men's Golf Association at a public course):

- Early bird 2-man net best ball (association members only)
- Open amateur Major
- Men's club tournament Major (members only)
- Men's city championship Major
- Summer 4-man net best ball (members only)
- Summer 2-man scramble (members only)
- Open 2-man net/scratch best ball Major
- 4-man scramble (members only)

You get points just for participating. 100 points for the first event and it goes up 100 points for each event, double for majors.

Then they give points for the top-4 places in each flight (if one flight on handicap they give points for like the top 20% or everyone who cashes).

Points are accumlated throughout the season and the top 14 point getters are divided into team's of seven plus the pro. They play one day of net best ball match play and one day of singles on 70% handicap.

Hope this helps.

[Rick Shefchik]

Scott -- I've played in that member-guest 9-hole two-man matches format with the shootout finale. Tied teams at the end of each shootout hole engage in a chip-off to see who stays and who goes. The pro has all the chipoff teams turn their back to the shot (so the last teams don't get an undue advantage having watched the other teams attempt the chip), and then calls the individual teams one by one to attempt the chip.

[Scott Coan]

Rick,

Check out Michael's reply #6 in regards to high cappers tending to dominate the shootout.  Has that been your experience at your club with the shootout format?

sc

[Rob_Waldron]

Scott

With respect to handicapping the four 9-hole formats, we handicap according to the USGA guidelines. I believe they may be found in the rule book. I can check with our Pro for the details.

With respect to the medal play playoff in our shootout, we have had a wide range of handicaps win. One year the winners of the lowest handicap flight won and another year the winner came from the highest handicap flight. Of course the hole handicaps are #1 = 11 hdcp, #17 = 16 hdcp, #18 = 4 hdcp.

Since we us 50% of the combined handicap the shots fall as follows:

Combined handicap <8  = 0 shots
Combined handicap 8 to 21  = 1 shot
Combined handicap 22 to 33 = 2 shots
Combined handicap 34 to 43 = 3 shots

If there is a tie after medal play, we go to sudden death with strokes falling according to the card.

[Rick Shefchik]

Scott -- As with any handicap events, the teams that win tend to be the teams with the guys who are playing to or better than their handicaps, whatever number they may be. In my experience, the winners have been a mix of higher and lower handicaps, but not too high -- 15s tend to be dangerous.