Golf Groups How Do You Choose Players ?

Follow Thread

By Carl T

  • 0 Likes
  • 3 Replies
  1. Carl T

    Carl T
    Little Rock, AR

    I play with a large golf group that plays on a regular schedule two times a week. The number of players range anywhere from 6 to 16. Handicaps range from scratch to 17. Teams are usually foursomes but occasionally there will be a threesome or a fivesome. A four or five man team will play at 80% of their handicap and a three man team plays at 100% of their handicap. We play the two best balls per hole for a team score. The winning team player collects a couple of dollars from the loosing team(s)player. The most you can loose is $2. There are no presses, greenies, sandies or any other gimmicks. The teams are chosen by the random throwing up of balls and the teams are made up of how the balls land and group together. Occasionally a team will be made up of all scratch handicap players vs a team made up of 10 to 17 handicap players by the way the balls fall. Is there a better or fairer way to make up teams ? If players were ranked as A,B,C and D players I have always thought that say there will be 3 teams and there are 3 A players, that there would be at least one A player on each team and they would not put balls into the toss. I will say at the end of the golf season that the won loss records of all the players are about equal. Is there a better way to choose up players for the matches ?
  2. Bomber3

    Bomber3
    Lake St Louis, MO

    Military

    Carl,

    I used to coordinate a large yearly golf trip that averaged between 24 to 36 players each year.  Like your group, we had the full spectrum of handicaps.  Since our group was always fairly large, I set up tee times and pairings in advance. We had a skins game for all of our morning rounds, so I broke our group into As, Bs, Cs and Ds based on handicaps.  We always had an even number of players every year (room arrangements) so the A players were easy, but to fill out the remainder of the 4-somes, I simply drew names by group.  Over the course of 5 or 6 years this worked out very well.  The teams were usually pretty evenly matched and no one complained about having a team stacked with all the better players.


    Hope this helps,

    Barry

  3. Carl T

    Carl T
    Little Rock, AR

    Thanks Barry. I am going to suggest that the A players do not put a ball in the ball toss up and the rest of the teams can be chosen by the random grouping of the ball toss. Even though handicap is supposed to even the playing field, when you have a team made up of two or three A players playing against B,C and D players, the odds are the better players will win 7 out of 10 games.
  4. Scott M

    Scott M
    Birdsboro, PA

    My group on Sunday mornings is anywhere from 10-16 guys. We have a deck of cards and cards labeled 1-4 are the first group and so on until it's done. For our smaller group of 5-10 guys on Wednesdays, we throw balls in the air. It's a random draw which makes it as fair as can be and the better golfers are better. It's not their fault if they win at a handicap game. 

Please login to post a comment.

Sign In

Haven't registered for Team Titleist yet?

Sign Up

Find a golf store near me