Hey guys, haven't posted here before but was looking for a little help. I'm putting together my first golf scramble. It's a low key 9 hole event. I plan on having the basic scramble rules, but am also looking for some fun variations. It will be on a Friday afternoon and the main competition between teams will be who can consume more alcohol. Most all golfers either personally know, or know of each other and there is no money involved, so cheating isn't really of any concern. I googled around for some variations or stipulations but couldn't find much. Not looking for anything outrageous but any suggestions are appreciated. Thank You in advance.

Well, so many scrambles are just fundraisers so they play things by the book because they're just looking to get people around the course. With that said there are some annoying rules I've seen implemented. For example, one time I played in one where you couldn't count the same person's shot twice in a row, so essentially after teeing off it was like having three players as one guy was excluded. So lame, and obviously a ploy to speed up play.

I am also not a fan of you have to use x drives by each person. It penalizes teams with really bad players. Plus you're only playing nine holes.

I'm hoping to hear of some interesting variations, but anyway our regular group has taken a trip out of town for several years for a 36 hole event. Many of those trips the afternoon round has been a 4-man scramble. Here is how we did it, this was mostly my concoction:

- match play vs. another foursome. Each hole won is worth a point. Team with the most points at the end of the round wins (ours was actually slightly more complex as it was tied to the morning round and was a Ryder Cup-style setup, but playing against another group who we could see in front of or behind us was fun).

- birdie or better, you move back a tee. Par or worse moves up a tee. This helps even out the competition. We try to pair our groups up with similar skill - all the "A" players grouped together, all the "B" players together, and so on, with the goal of each player contributing as close to 25% of the shots as possible. So with the worst players playing together there were situations were they were all the way up to the ladies tee, not to mention it gave them a feeling of helping out more instead of riding coattails all the way around.

At the very least I like the move up/move back rule as it mixes things up.

You could modify the above where you did something like: at the end of the nine holes have the teams with the most points OR the winners of each match go into a shootout (you could scrap the group vs. group thing here and just go with the best overall scores). The length of the shootout would be contingent upon how many teams you have, but half sounds about right. Break ties with a chip-off. Let's say you have eight teams. The top four scoring teams go to the 10th (or 1st) tee and play a scramble. Eliminate the one or two teams with the worst score, your call on how many. As above, break ties with a chip-off. Then play additional holes, eliminating teams until there is a winner. I prefer, daylight and interest permitting, that the last hole be won outright and not by a chip-off, but scrambles tend to bring scores closer together so that could take awhile. So set a chip-off to happen after x extra holes.

The above ties together a scramble with a shootout. All the teams that didn't make it will stick around to watch the others and interesting stuff can sometimes happen when people have a crowd watching them. Especially if, say, you have everyone kick in $10-20 at the start and divide the cash among the winners four ways, or pay more than one team if there are enough. E.g. eight teams = 32 people at $20 per = $640. Split $440 ($110 each) among the winners and $200 ($50 each) among the runner-ups.

As you have stated that you're looking to mostly get drunk and have fun that may all be too convoluted. But if everyone stays sober enough to see it through it - or some similar derivation - should be a good time.

I have played in a couple scramble events that were fun and goofy...

In one event several holes were played with strange circumstances. This worked great because there were a lot of high handicappers who had a lot more fun than usual.

-375 yard par four. You were only allowed to use a 9-iron for every shot including putting.
-325 yard par four the hole had a toilet seat around it, the kind that is open in the front. You couldn't move the seat so you had to take that into account with your approach shot if you wanted a makeable putt.
-500 yard plus par 5 you were allowed to tee the ball up for every shot.
-par three over a water hazard. If you skipped your ball off the pond and it then comes to rest 'outside the hazard' you can subtract one shot on the hole. (My team had about a 20 yard pitch for an ace on this hole.)

Some nits could be very turned off by an outing like this, but maybe not if you make it clear beforehand that it is all for fun.

I like that you can have as many mulligans you want (only off the tee of course), except before every mulligan you have to shotgun a beer.

Whatever you do, do not sell string or similar measuring devices (for people to pay to make gimmes be holed putts, etc).

If time isn't a huge factor, something that rewards good (reasonable) shots by all 4 players. Example, if all 4 players hit the fairway off the tee, you get a mulligan to be used somewhere else on that hole.

This adds to meaning to a lot of tee shots which would otherwise be meaningless.

Personally, I despise scrambles but recognize the attraction to high handicappers and those that just want a social outing. While there are a hundred different options or rules, I like a variation we called "Gold Ball" the best. It's pretty much a "modified scramble" with a twist.

Each team starts with a sleeve of yellow golf balls (provided by organiser). There is an order of play designated by the order of the names written on the scorecard. On hole one, player 1 will play his own ball, using one of the "gold balls" (hole 2, player 2, etc).

His score is then added to the other 3 players score, who play the hole as a scramble. If the player loses the gold ball, he must use a second gold ball to finish the hole (while adhering to USGA rules of course). If the team loses all three gold balls, they are DQ'd. Of course, you could always give them 6 or 12 if you didn't want that to be a problem.

I always thought it was fun because it put added pressure on the guy with the gold ball not to lose it or make a huge number. It also created a lot of opportunities to give the guy sh*t.

Have fun, hope this helps (someone).

We have done the toilet seat thing. It makes for a lot of laughs, especially if the group does not know about it until they get to the green.

On a particular hole, make everyone putt with a baseball or soccer ball or basketball. Makes for an interesting time.

Make everyone play with their opposite hand on one hole. Lefties hit right handed, and vice versa.