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Competition / Charity Day Formats

3 Blind Mice

 

aka “3 Little Pigs.”

Three numbers between 1 and 18 are drawn randomly after the round and those three holes are thrown out.

Players add up their scores from the remaining holes, and those are their scores for the round.

 

Variations
  1. The three holes drawn become worth double – either double the points if it is a Stableford competition (fantastic!) or double the number of strokes if it is a Strokeplay competition (not so fantastic!);
  2. Players can throw out their 3 worst holes and their score is the total of the remaining 15;

3 Jacks and a Jill

 

This was a competition introduced at my old club as a way of integrating the Ladies’ Section with the Men’s Section at a time when the ladies were struggling for numbers on competition days. The format can be almost anything you want but everyone must be in a team of 4 and include at least 1 female golfer.

I’ve played this in the 6-6-6 format mentioned on another tab, and also as a straight forward Stableford with the 2 best scores to count, with the “Jill”’s score counting double on the Par 3’s. Great fun, all of them.

6-6-6

 

Three different formats are played over the round.

For 18 hole rounds (the norm), the format changes every six holes, for 9 hole rounds it’s every 3 holes.

For Example :

  • Holes 1-6, Better-ball
  • Holes 7-12, Aggregate (scores added together)
  • Holes 13-18, Scramble

You can make the formats anything you want, and Stableford scoring usually works better than Medal or Bogey (try them and make up your own mind).

I have played this game as a 4-ball team scoring :

  • Holes 1-6, 2 best scores to count;
  • Holes 7-12, 3 best scores to count;
  • Holes 13-18, all 4 scores to count.

and also as a pair,

  • Holes 1-6, Foursomes (alternate shot);
  • Holes 7-12, Greensomes (see the Glossary if you don’t know Greensomes);
  • Holes 13-18, Better-ball.

 

Could also be the format for a bet if you’re out on a social round. I have only played 3 in 1 as part of a Saturday competition at my old club so the betting was done as the best front 9, the best back 9 and best overall, but that’s not to say you couldn’t make it a simple 18-hole bet or split it up into three different 6-hole bets (each new format is a new bet) if you prefer.

Chicago

 

aka “39’s”.

Chicago can be played as a competition format or as a betting game within a single group of golfers, and is essentially a creative handicapping method.

Players receive a negative quota of points, called a “hurdle”, based on their handicaps. Scratch players get -39 points, one handicaps get -38, two-handicaps get -37, and so on to 36-handicaps, who get -3.

Then, based on their performances, players receive positive points as follows:

  • Bogeys = 1 pt
  • Pars = 2 pts
  • Birdies = 3 pts
  • Eagles = 4 pts

 

The player who clears his “hurdle” by the most points wins. Wagering can involve a fixed sum to the winner or an amount based on point differentials. You can also add a bonus for anyone clearing his hurdle.

Criss-Cross

 

The front nine and back nine holes are paired up – No. 1 and No. 10 form a pair, No. 2 and No. 11, No. 3 and No. 12, and so on, up to No. 9 and No. 18.

At the end of the round, compare the scores you recorded on No. 1 and No. 10, 2 and 11 etc etc and circle the lower of the two if you’ve played Strokeplay or circle the higher of the two if you were playing Stableford or Bogey.

Then add up the 9 holes you’ve circled. That’s your Criss Cross score.

 

Criss-Cross is usually played using gross scores but handicaps can be used if you want to.

Eclectic

 

The objective here is to get your lowest score on each individual hole on the course, over a number of rounds, played in the timeframe decided by the competitions secretary / organiser.

It is effectively a multi-round personal best-ball competition.

The game typically runs for a period of a month or more, to give the majority of the players a decent amount of time to get their rounds played, and scores in.

It works like this – a master spreadsheet is formed after the first eligible round and everyone’s hole by hole (starting) scores from that round are entered. Each round you play after that is a chance to improve your score on each hole.

For example, after the first round your scores were :

5 5 5 7 3 4 6 4 5 (44) 4 3 5 6 8 5 4 3 6 (44) Gross 88. This is your starting score.

You play your next round and score as follows :

5 6 5 6 4 5 5 4 4 (44) 5 4 5 6 5 6 6 2 7 (46) Gross 90, which, despite being a higher gross score, does in fact improve your Eclectic on holes 4, 7, 9, 14 and 17 so your Eclectic score now looks like this :

5 5 5 6 3 4 5 4 4 (41) 4 3 5 6 5 5 4 2 6 (40) Gross 81.

All players keep going, checking which holes they have improved on after each round and adjusting the overall Eclectic score as appropriate, until the end of the competition period.

Typically, the competition is for Best Gross, but could be worth having a Best Net prize as well so it keeps everyone involved throughout.

Flag

 

In a Flag Tournament, each player receives a certain number of strokes – usually the course par plus two-thirds of the player’s full handicap. So, a 15-handicapper on a par-72 course gets 82 strokes. He then plays 82 shots and stops, planting a flag on the spot where his 82nd shot finished up.

The flags should be provided on the first tee by the tournament organisers and each participant should have his name clearly marked on his flag. This way, as players make their way through the back nine, they can see where others bit the dust.

If a player finishes all 18 holes before using his total strokes, he should either keep playing until he’s out of strokes or stop. Under the first option, the winner is the player who plants his flag farthest on the course. Under the second, the winner is whoever has the most strokes remaining after 18 holes. The reason two-thirds handicap is used, though, is so most people will finish somewhere inside of 18 holes.

One additional rule : You can’t plant a flag past a hole that you haven’t completed. In other words, if you’re five feet short of a green with one stroke left, you can’t blast the ball with your 2-iron onto the next fairway.

Also, if the furthest two players both finish on the same green, the winner is the golfer closest to the hole.

Pink Ball

 

Pink Ball requires teams of four golfers.

Each group has a bright pink ball that players take turns using (of course, the ball can be any colour, but the more obnoxious, the better). Player 1 uses it on the first hole, player 2 on the second, and so on, with the objective being to complete the round without losing it.

The Team score is the best net score + the pink ball score on each hole.

Obviously, as I have alluded to above, there is always the risk that the pink ball gets lost during the round which means that those teams are effectively out of the running due to only having 1 net score per hole from that point on, and will no longer have much interest in the competition.

My suggestion is to have the main prizes for the teams that complete the round with the pink ball, and some alternate prizes for those teams that did not.

 

Variations

As a fund raiser on a Charity day make the pink ball have a monetary value, say £5, and if the ball is returned at the end of the round the competitor has the option of claiming their £5 back or donating it to the Charity. If they don’t return the ball then the £5 is automatically donated to the Charity.

Allow competitors to buy a sleeve of 3 pink balls (so they have backups for the round) for say, £15, and again they can return the golf balls at the end of the round and claim back £5 (the other £10 being donated to the Charity as the cost of allowing extra balls for backup) or donate that to the Charity as well.

Scramble

 

aka “Texas Scramble” or “Mexican Hat.”

Scramble is a very popular format to use for Charity Days and certain Corporate events and typically involves a “shotgun start” (see Glossary for more detail).

Each playing group is a team competing against all the other playing groups.

Everyone in the group tees off, and then the players decide which was the best drive. The others pick up their golf balls and everyone plays from the spot where the chosen drive finished. Same again for the next shot – choose where the best second shot finished and the others pick up their golf balls and everyone plays from there. Repeat until the ball is holed out.

Usually, a rule is made that each player in a group must have at least four of their drives used on the way round, so don’t leave it to the last minute to get done!

There are no specific rules regarding the handicaps for Scramble because it is so very difficult to calculate fairly (if a team has a really low handicap golfer he is much more likely to be hitting better drives / approach shots / putts than the higher handicap guys for example), hence the 4 drive rule just mentioned above.

It has been suggested to handicap the teams as follows :

  • Player with a handicap between + and 9 – 20% handicap used;
  • Player with a handicap between 10 and 19 – 15% handicap used;
  • Player with a handicap between 20 and 29 – 10% handicap used;
  • Player with a handicap of 30 or more – 5% handicap used;

Add the percentages together to make the Team handicap.

 

Variations

Typically at a Charity / Corporate Day the players enter in ready formed teams (hence the difficulty in calculating handicaps and trying to keep it fair) but if the Organisers are choosing teams then I suggest this :

Separate all the players into four equal groups by handicap (lowest to highest).

Use four hats, and pick a player from each hat to form a team.

Another variation is to make “A” and “B” players (the lower handicap guys) tee off from the back markers.

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