Ed,
We had a "home and away" event with a local country club for a few years,
about 20 players from each club, and handled it much like you are...2 low
net. We had two players from our group and two players from their group in
each foursome. Each player kicked in $10, I think, and we paid 3 places.
What kept it fair was a knowledge captains from both clubs had of all
players...who was playing good and bad, who was sandbagging of sorts, who
played fast and slow, etc. The captains got together and made up teams based
on handicaps and their knowledge of players. Each club threw a buffet lunch
for the other at their home course (Nothing fancy...burgers, dogs, beans,
potato salad, etc. and I recall their home baked cookies were great!).
Greens fees (including cart and range balls to warm up) were a special rate
$25 for the visitors. Lunch, golf and a lot of fun for $35...didn't even
need to win to have a good day. Home players kicked in some bucks to cover
visitors' lunches...think usually about $20. But, even with only $400 in the
pot, it was always a somewhat spirited competition.
Bernie
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ed Reeder" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "clubmaker online" <ShopTalk@mail.msen.com>
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2007 7:50 PM
Subject: ShopTalk: Re: Tournament Pairings Help
Dave,
Absolutely great questions.
1. The competitions are individual foursome events.
2. A foursome's 2 best net scores per hole. (2 * 18) = Total Team Strokes
3. Net scores, handicaps are monitored and are trusted (but sand baggers
will exist to some small degree).
4. "Fair" was probably the incorrect term. Equitable might be better.
Dean Knuth's web site has an article on picking a partner
http://www.popeofslope.com/guidelines/picking.html
There are certain handicap combinations that have an advantage /
disadvantage. I would want to avoid those combinations if possible.
Here is an excerpt from the Knuth article:
Dr. Scheid has also researched four-man teams, a grouping most often found
in a pro-amateur competition. In many tournaments, the teams consist of an
A player (handicap of 3 to 7), B (8-12), C (13-17) and D (18-22), making
each team relatively equal in strength. but when teams are allowed to put
together their own combinations, it's possible to gain an advantage by
studying Dr. Scheid's findings. They show that a team composed entirely of
A players would have an edge on a team of C players, but would not fare as
well as a team of B players. According to Dr. Scheid, the best combination
would be a team whose composition is BBDD. Next, a full stroke behind in
potential, would be a team of AACC, closely followed by AABB and AADD.
This research is not to be dismissed lightly, based as it is on the study
of thousands of tournament scores.
Of course our fields won't have an equal distribtion of A, B, C, & D
players.
/Ed
Dave Tutelman wrote:
Sorry to disappoint, Ed! I guess I'm not a smart guy, because I don't
understand the question. Actually, I don't think I know what a fair
foursome is. For instance, first I would want to know:
(1) Does a club win, or does an individual win?
(2) What game is being played? Individual stroke play? Four ball
better ball? Something else?
(3) Does the game include handicap, or is it gross? Either way, are
the handicaps known and trusted?
(4) Could you give some examples of an UNFAIR foursome, so I know
what the metric of fairness is?
Basically I'm saying that you are asking for a precise, algorithmic
solution to a problem that is far from precisely stated. ("Fair" is
hardly a precise measurement.)
Thanks,
DaveT
At 04:42 PM 8/6/2007, Ed Reeder wrote:
>I'm hoping that one of you smart guys can help me out.
>
> From time to time I participate in tournaments with other clubs and we
>create foursomes which usually consist of two players from one club and
>two players from the other club. At times the number of players on each
>side may be different, so instead of 2 from each side, it could be 3
and
>1, or even 4 and 0.
>
>Right now we do this by hand, with no real guidance on how to fairly
>allocate the players.
>
>I'd like to have a way to automatically and fairly create foursomes.
>Though we typically have only two clubs to draw from, I could see that
>three or four could be a possibility.
>
>I've got a few questions:
>1. Is there a formula for fairly creating the foursomes?
>2. Is there a way to automate this in Excel, with the ability to draw
>players from 1 to 4 "pools" of players?
>3. Is there a cheap software package that does this?
>
>Thx,
>
>/Ed
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