MOST Frustrating scramble EVER!

I played a scramble yesterday with myself, my dad, and 2 of his friends and my god it just was so bad I need to vent my frustration here.   Number one I will say my dad and I are not on good standards after this week well in my book anyway and we will leave it at that.  But my dad and his 2 friends are not good golfers at all but invited me to play with them to "help" them win.  So I pay my 50 dollars to enter and 20 dollars for our team skins I PAID FOR THE SKINS keep that in mind.  As we are at the counter paying they hand me a sheet of rules and they said we had to play ALL par threes with our putter the entire whole.  That pissed me off first seeing as it seemed like this was just a bunch of idiots who don't know the kind of damage you can do to a putter doing this.  But our start off hole was a par 3.  We all used my dads putter and still ended up getting a par.  As I am teeing of on the next hole I look over and see the team playing that par 3 with normal clubs.  Now I understand not using the putter because you afraid of breaking it by WHY the heck didn't anyone say a damn thing when they announced the rules on it but me?  I stood up and asked if it could be changed and the person who ran the thing said no it needed to be that way.  So I just said whatever but I wasn't going to use my putter just my dads shit one.  On to the rest of the scramble.

We basically took my shot everytime and they didn't give two shits about the game seeing as I just paid 70 dollars to play a bad course with these guys to try and win.  I wasn't even golfing great which was getting me more frustrated and the fact they were on the verge of getting drunk and didn't care to win was making me even more upset.  But to top it off we were on a par 5 I hit my drive roughly 300 down the middle left us a 150 yard shot to the green (really short par 5) so my dad goes up first for the 150 yard shot and makes it for a double eagle we were all excited and I knew we got the skins with that hole.  So we get back to the clubhouse after the round and sadly we were 8 under after 18 holes and keep in mind -3 of that came on one hole.  That was good enough for second place which I was happy with seeing as we played bad.  But they announce skins and of course everyone bitched because they didnt believe the 2 on a par 5 which I knew would happen but that wasn't the problem.  The skins totalled 320 dollars so it would of been 80 dollars a person.  I get up to go the bathroom and when I get out my dad gave the 320 dollars back to the course.  I PAID FOR THE SKINS OF THE TEAM IN THE FIRST PLACE!  He was drunk and just did it because he didn't even know what he was doing and it just made me mad that I paid the 20 dollars to get into the skins but they give my share away?!?

To sum it up I paid 70 dollars total to play on a bad course with terrible rules/organization, bad teammates, to win my 70 dollars back only for it to be given away without my concent.  Just an all around bad day.  Sorry for the long read guys but I just had to vent.

This sounds insane to me, sorry. I think you should focus on your relationship with your father rather than the loss of $70.00. That's something you can't put a price on. It also seems to be the main problem with your entire story as well, though it still sounds Jerry Springer-ish to me.

Tried I'm 22 with a wife and kid and he is 48 with a drinking problem

You're mad now, but at some point you'll look back on it and laugh.  I'm betting that next time you won't go to the bathroom until you get the money.

I agree with Spyder here ... this sounds a lot more like a family issue than a golf issue.

P.S.  I am playing in a Scramble in two weeks with my dad and brother ... I sure hope ours doesn't turn out like this.

For a tournament format that's supposed to be loose and fun a lot of people seem to have a problem with scrambles.

I'm sorry to hear that. I'm definitely not going to offer you any advice or words of encouragement having not met you, or knowing your situation personally. I'm sorry if my initial post offended you as well.

All I can say is that you should make the best out of the situation and do your best to offer a helping hand if he's willing to accept. If an individual is not willing to change for themselves, they won't change for anyone else. This is just a sad, cold truth when it comes to addictions.

4-Man scrambles are fun when its for charity. Prizes are usually a free round or some clubhouse "bucks" to buy an overpriced hat or something. It all comes down to who can cheat just enough to win but not so much that its obvious. "What did you shoot?" "What did YOU shoot?" "65" "OH, got ya by 1, "64".

Plus in charity events they always sell "mulligans" to make more money. Has anyone ever taken ONLY the EXACT amount of mulligans they bought?

If its a serious tournament though with some serious prizes, these little annoyances become major issues. I would not play in one if not for a charity. 3-Man is as much as I would do since you could have 2 teams per hole. You declare your mulligans if any. The other teams writes them down and confirms purchase after wards plus track your score. This is as legit as you can get with this format and mulligans. Otherwise its BS.

Par-3 with putter only? I wouldn't do it. What's the point?

For this story though? The question is why weren't YOU getting drunk. That's standard 4-Man scramble etiquette.

Haha yea the par 3 with putter was just beyond dumb and as far as the getting drunk also I probably should of haha made me less irritated.

Scrambles mostly turn to Shambles and they are to raise money and hope you win a raffle prize. The pencil whipping I've seen in captain's choice tourneys here in Florida is astounding. Best tourney I've played recently was a progressive tee captain's choice. All players start on the white tees and when you birdie the hole you move back a tee and if you bogey the hole you move up. My group played the tips most of the round, but the winning score was 6 under, not 21 under. It was neat to see guys playing a 495 yard par 4 that usually play the gold tees. "So THIS is what it looks like from back here." was overheard a lot around the course.