That was kinda my point. Guy can't hit DR or 3w on the planet but he's gonna miraculously stripe his 4i right up the middle? GTFO

Even more stupid is why would this hack be carrying a 4-iron?

I got invited to fill in for a friend in a 3 day, 8 person event next Thur-Sat. Best I can tell it's a bunch of guys who are members at the same club and every year they do this little tournament at nearby courses. I don't know any of them other than the guy I'm filling in for, and even he is just a friend of a friend who I golf with from time to time.

Team handicaps will be the average of the two players on the team and using already established handicaps. It's a match play event with strokes given based on handicaps. So a team of a 4 and 14 would be playing off a 9 and giving strokes on 2 holes to a team made up of a 7 and 15 who would be an 11.

Day 1 - This seems to be mostly just a practice round, but the scores from day 1 are used for seeding and picking teams. Everyone plays their rounds and net scores are used to seed everyone. Top seed has first pick of his partner and so on down the line...at least that's my understanding.
Day 2 - 2 man scramble(each player's tee shot must be used at least 5 times if the match goes all 18 holes)
Day 3 - Alternate shot

Here is the list of handicaps
3.9(me)
6.9
10.9
11.8
12.9
15.3
15.6
17.5

The 15.6 & 11.8 won last year and are automatically paired this year. The course is 6332 yards and is 69.4/123.

Now, knowing nothing about any of these people other than their posted handicaps, how would you go about picking your partner if you have the first pick*? Is doing anything other than taking the best player available just FPS? In addition to a small prize fund, after the last round they meet up for lunch. The 4th place team has to buy the first round of drinks for everyone, and all the non winners cover lunch for the winners. There's also apparently an "ugly brown jacket" on the line for the winners. The money on the line isn't significant enough to factor into the decision making(winning probably won't even cover my greens fees for the 3 rounds) so do I just go with whoever I'll have the most fun playing with? I may never see these guys again after next weekend so the bragging rights don't mean much to me, but I'd like to do whatever I can to help someone win!

I've never played this course(The Westin Kierland Golf Club), never played a 2 man scramble, and never played alternate shot.

*this is very much just a hypothetical as I don't expect to come away with the top seed on a course I've never seen*

Sounds like fun. I would just take the guy who you think you would get along with the best.

And ha, I have even played Kierland in the past, allbeit about 25 years ago.

If you dont know anything about the other players, i would probably pick the lowest handicap player.

after Day 1 i'd be curious to see the deviations between HC and net scores for picking purposes since there may be some benefit to picking a higher HC to reduce the strokes you're giving. i did some quick math and it doesn't matter if you're playing raw HCs or course HCs because the results are the same. probably should clarify if you're rounding up if 0.5 or higher.

if you pick the lowest HC you're giving 7 strokes to the champs, if you pick the highest HC you're giving 1. my hunch is your best partner is either Player 2 or Player 3, but who the **** knows? alternate shot can be such a crapshoot.

I'm going gut feel based on what I observe during the practice round. With those handicaps everyone but the 6.9 is going to have weaknesses, I personally would look to see who is steadiest. And if that's not obvious **** yes I'm going for whoever I'd want to play with.

Booked a trip to Myrtle Beach in about six weeks. Will be the first time I've been there since 1988, looking forward to it, COVID-willing.

Mathematically I would think the choice that shows the highest winning chances would be either the lowest or highest handicap available.

Yep

They post it. It knocked three strokes off.

Sent from my SM-G981V using Tapatalk

Negotiating a bet and wondering if this seems fair enough. I’m an 8 HC. Buddy is a 2. We’re both currently at our lowest handicap ever. Match play with bag raid that only applies to him. He starts w 6 clubs of his choice. I remove any club of my choice but putter when he wins a hole. He gets one back of his choice when I win a hole.

interesting. is he a long hitter? i assume you have a full bag?

For perspective I played as a 24 today. Front 9 I shot a 41 for a net 29. I had two doubles, one bogey, one birdie. For me I played out of my mind.

Back 9 I shot 54 for a net 42. And the back 9 is par 35.

Look, I was getting 24 strokes on this course for a reason.

That said I think a 22 shooting an 82 is unlikely, but not impossible.

Yes he’s a long hitter and yes I get a full bag.

course characteristics? are there forced carries or is the trouble mostly lateral?
are you thinking the bet is 1:1?

Reading random threads on GolfWRX I found the following:

I'm quite curious as to whether this could be impacting my game -- I hit a particularly miserable drive on 16 yesterday that very much felt like a close down and have definitely had a struggle late in rounds lately with the lefts. I've been told several times in the past that I don't play the ball far enough forward so I consciously try to do so. Could be creeping forward at inopportune times.

Might be time for an extended range session. It's not like I'll be defacing the Mona Lisa.

Back to thinkin' this guy's just a unicorn, ha. He shot 109-98 in the club championship this weekend, from his normal tees.

It all boils down to each individual golfer. You generally want to ball forward with the driver so you hit it on the upswing. For me when it is too far forward my mind thinks I need to keep the face open longer and causes a slice. I would just experiment a bit on the range and see what gets you the best results.

Whenever I end up doing a driver fitting I'll be fascinated to see what the Trackman says about my angle of attack. I'd be willing to bet that it's negative (or at best close to zero) -- intentionally hitting up on the ball with the driver has never felt comfortable.

For how much golf I play I have very little understanding of swing mechanics, but from instruction and experimenting I tend to move the ball further forward in my stance with the driver to give me more of a chance to square the face and avoid push-slices. That tends to work, but it tends to lead to pulls a much higher percentage of the time than I want to it, which in my very basic understanding of physics probably has more to do with how i finish than where the ball is in my stance. I absolutely crush those pulls, but they go left on a line, so I tend to move the ball further back when there is trouble on the left.

On a related aside, no matter what I do with my 3 wood off the fairway I can't replicate that pull; nearly every 3 wood shot of mine fades or slices pretty bad. I don't what the major difference is between the 3 wood and driver that makes that happen.

For all of the above, I'm very interested in getting on a Trackman. Luckily our club just purchased on and is building a cool little interior studio for it.

That'll be a nice perk. It would be great to have access to one, even if only occasionally.

Kinda on a related subject there is a decent chance that I'll have some space in a few months to set up an indoor hitting area. It was all I could do not to pull the trigger on a listing I saw the other day from a guy selling a full setup (minus projector) - net, turf, screen, etc - for about half of retail. Gotta be patient.

Handicap question....... at my home course I play as a 20. My buddy is a 15. Let's say we decide to play for $20. Am I supposed to pick up after net double? I'm guessing no. But part of the reason net double is the max I can record is for pace of play purposes.

Help me out.

Yeah, it'll be cool, but I'm a little annoyed that amongst all the talk about income down due to COVID (from different angles) and talk about potential assessments for general fund that Board plunked down $30k on a "perk," not to mention what the build out will cost. The Board discussed whether to charge for it (which would repay itself in a year) vs. not (four years). They better go with not charging....

On that note, I have had a few lessons from both the pro and the assistant pro, and neither charged me for it. When I asked one of them about it he said, "I'm not charging you this time, kind of a perk of membership." I know for a fact it's not an "official" perk, and at least the assistant could definitely use some extra lesson money. I frankly didn't want to dig too deep into it because hey, free lessons, but I wonder what's going on there....

No set rule to go by off of this but after we reach net double we just pick up. and call it a push. Sure one of you might make an 8 and the other a 10, but we just push it and move on.