Club Tournaments - Net or Gross or Both

[ElGuapo_1992]

How do other clubs do it for tournaments?  My club has various 2 man and 4 man events and the way they do it is to pay both gross and net per flight.  They take the 36 teams, split them into three groups of 12 based on handicaps. Half the money paid out to both gross and net in each flight.   

My thought is paying out gross is simply not fair.  A couple of 5 handicappers get thrown into A-flight and forced to play straight up against a couple of plus handicaps for half the prize money.  Or if the two 5 handicaps fall into B-flight, then a 10 and 12 cap team is forced to play them straight up for half the prize money. 

Is there any logic to paying Gross in these primary fun-based tournaments?

Thanks 

[ChetlovesMer]

That's an interesting take. I've played many a gross and net event where half the prize money goes to gross and half to net. I've never thought of them as unfair. I mean I know what I'm signing up for right? Personally, I like having a gross and a net winner. I think really good golf should be rewarded. 

Having said that, if it's a two man or four man event, I've always seen the handicaps within the flights mixed. For example if there are 8 golfers in a flight for a 2 man event. The lowest handicap pairs with the highest, the second lowest with the second highest, the third lowest with the third highest and the two golfers in the middle are paired up. 

If its a singles event than I'd like to see the golfer who shoots the lowest score rewarded. So, having a low gross and low net makes sense in my simple little brain. 

[pganapathy]

All our club tournaments have a gross and net winner.  Admittedly no money is involved so I may look at it differently than you, but I am totally for both gross and net.  It gives everybody a chance

[mcanadiens]

Guess I always figured awarding both gross and net kept more people in the hunt and made the overall event more entertaining for more people. At least in our case, we weren't talking about a lot of money either way, so why not give a few more people a shot at a prize?

 

[jsgolfer]

All of our club tournaments are gross and net and flighted by handicap, except for the Club Championship.  In fact, I don't know of any other event where we don't pay gross and net in the same flight.

The two 5 HC's in your scenario, may not win a gross prize in the first flight (although they can) but they certainly have a chance in net.  And then if they fall into the second flight, they may not beat  2-10 HC's for net, but they certainly would have a chance to win gross? Not sure I follow your reasoning for not having both.

[ElGuapo_1992]

Maybe this analogy will clear up the reasoning.  I'm a 5 handicap and I am playing a plus 2 handicap.  We are playing for 100$.  50$ goes to the winner of gross and $50 goes to the winner of net.  What's my chances of winning Gross?  I have a 50/50 chance to win Net but my chance to beat a plus handicap straight up not very good.  

Expand this to 12 players in A-flight ranging from +2 to a 5.  $600 goes to the gross flight winner.  $600 to the net flight winner.  The odds of the plus 2 winning any money significantly higher than the 5 handicap.  Why should the 5 go in with lower chances to win money in a fun-based event?      

And for the keeping more people in the hunt comment...the plus handicaps are in the hunt for both net and gross.  My proposal is instead of paying top 2 net and gross, just pay the the top 4 net....so, not lowering the number of winners, just paying out where the odds are more fair.

[ElGuapo_1992]

For clarity, these are events where you pick your partners,  Our club mixes and matches for our weekly events to even the teams.  But our larger events where you pick who you want to play with is where my frustration is....we aren't playing for the club championship...fun-based, and I think the odds to win should be fair.  Last year 2-man pick your poison event, a plus 2 and plus 1 won 700$ playing poorly for themselves but still winning gross.  When me and my partner play poorly for ourselves, we have zero chance to win gross or net.

[jsgolfer]

8 minutes ago, ElGuapo_1992 said:

Maybe this analogy will clear up the reasoning.  I'm a 5 handicap and I am playing a plus 2 handicap.  We are playing for 100$.  50$ goes to the winner of gross and $50 goes to the winner of net.  What's my chances of winning Gross?  I have a 50/50 chance to win Net but my chance to beat a plus handicap straight up not very good.  

Expand this to 12 players in A-flight ranging from +2 to a 5.  $600 goes to the gross flight winner.  $600 to the net flight winner.  The odds of the plus 2 winning any money significantly higher than the 5 handicap.  Why should the 5 go in with lower chances to win money in a fun-based event?      

And for the keeping more people in the hunt comment...the plus handicaps are in the hunt for both net and gross.  My proposal is instead of paying top 2 net and gross, just pay the the top 4 net....so, not lowering the number of winners, just paying out where the odds are more fair.

And the +2 has almost zero chance to win low net, as you have to win low gross.  And when we do the gross and net, it's not like there is 1 gross and 1 net winner, there are usually multiple winners in each flight, depending on the number of golfers.  In your 12 golfer scenario, we would likely pay 1st and 2nd gross and net.

And if you do just net winners, you won't get the better players to play, as the +2 has almost no chance to win net, unless they shoot well under par.

[ElGuapo_1992]

What is your basis for saying a +2 has almost zero chance to win Net?  Isn't the handicap system to provide a basis for leveling golfers of different skills?

As a data point, the plus handicapped teams won 1st and 2nd in BOTH gross and net in our last big Saturday event.  Clean sweep.  

I hear that argument a lot though...plus handicaps have zero chance to win Net.  If I get 7 pops against a plus 2, I think its going to be close...definitely I do not think I'm a huge favorite to win in that scenario.

[jsgolfer]

18 minutes ago, ElGuapo_1992 said:

What is your basis for saying a +2 has almost zero chance to win Net?  Isn't the handicap system to provide a basis for leveling golfers of different skills?

As a data point, the plus handicapped teams won 1st and 2nd in BOTH gross and net in our last big Saturday event.  Clean sweep.  

I hear that argument a lot though...plus handicaps have zero chance to win Net.  If I get 7 pops against a plus 2, I think its going to be close...definitely I do not think I'm a huge favorite to win in that scenario.

My basis is totally anecdotal, because I don't think I've ever seen that occur in my over 50 years of playing in lots of events. Typically the more higher handicaps they are, the range of their scores far outweigh the plus handicaps, so they typically don't win net events, it can happen, but not that I've ever seen.  Now we don't have a lot of plus handicaps that play in our events, we only have a couple at our course. But in your case, it loos like they would've won all four net prizes as well, if it was net only.

I believe there is a thread already on here about the difference in HC's and relative chance to shoot a score under your HC, maybe @iacas remembers.  And Yes, you alone against a +2 HC, might not be favored to win, but if the +2 is going against 10 - 7 HC's, his chances go down, as their range of scores above or below are wider.

[pganapathy]

3 hours ago, ElGuapo_1992 said:

I hear that argument a lot though...plus handicaps have zero chance to win Net.

I think the reason people say this is one bad hole is more recoverable from with a higher handicap.  The margin of error is so much less the lower your handicap is.  You need birdies to make up a bad hole, whereas higher handicap golfers need pars

[GolfLug]

The only gross tournament I enter is the four man-team event where each team has one each of an A, B, C and D level player. They do an unusually great job at level loading the teams within a shot or two. Fun and fair. 

Entering any other gross event, including two-man flighted team events is a recipe to getting hosed. Flighting a gross event is still favoring the top few in that flight. Flight spreads are not tight enough, usually 6-shot spreads. I almost always fall on the upper end of the mid-cap flight so usually not a fair fight. I'm staying home.

Unless you like getting skewered for fun, net is where it's at. 

[DeadMan]

My men's club does net for every flight and then gross and net for the championship flight. I think generally that works out pretty well - the handicaps for the flights are within 5 strokes of each other, so that makes the net pretty fair. I am unfortunately one of a handful of golfers where I'm on the borderline of the championship flight. And that means I'm really only playing for net when I do the championship flight, because we have enough 1s and better that I'm not going to beat all of them in a round. 

[ChetlovesMer]

6 hours ago, ElGuapo_1992 said:

For clarity, these are events where you pick your partners,  Our club mixes and matches for our weekly events to even the teams.  But our larger events where you pick who you want to play with is where my frustration is....we aren't playing for the club championship...fun-based, and I think the odds to win should be fair.  Last year 2-man pick your poison event, a plus 2 and plus 1 won 700$ playing poorly for themselves but still winning gross.  When me and my partner play poorly for ourselves, we have zero chance to win gross or net.

I can see your point on this one. Picking your partners and pairing up a couple of plus handicaps against a bunch of non-plus handicaps the non-pluses really have no chance. 

But as you said it's just for fun. So, your choice is either don't play. Or play and have fun even knowing you have no chance to win. 

[iacas]

7 hours ago, ElGuapo_1992 said:

What is your basis for saying a +2 has almost zero chance to win Net?  Isn't the handicap system to provide a basis for leveling golfers of different skills?

One on one, yes. Most events with larger numbers of participants take a percentage of handicap, because it's easier to shoot -3 net or -5 net as a 22 handicap than it does as a +2. Plus there are often MORE 22s than +2s.

[bkuehn1952]

On 3/7/2024 at 6:57 PM, ElGuapo_1992 said:

How do other clubs do it for tournaments?  My club has various 2 man and 4 man events and the way they do it is to pay both gross and net per flight.  They take the 36 teams, split them into three groups of 12 based on handicaps. Half the money paid out to both gross and net in each flight.   

My thought is paying out gross is simply not fair.  A couple of 5 handicappers get thrown into A-flight and forced to play straight up against a couple of plus handicaps for half the prize money.  Or if the two 5 handicaps fall into B-flight, then a 10 and 12 cap team is forced to play them straight up for half the prize money. 

Is there any logic to paying Gross in these primary fun-based tournaments?

Thanks 

I agree with you that the way the payouts are setup benefits the teams with the lowest handicaps.

• Flighting the groups allows the low handicappers a better shot at winning Net. They do not need to compete against teams of two 20-handicappers for Net. The 1st flight mainly has teams with single digits.
• Allowing teammates to select their partner results in there being several teams with plus handicap partners playing against less talented teams for Gross.

As you indicated, the top teams (lowest combined handicap) have a significant advantage in the Gross competition while also retaining a decent shot at the Net prize because of the flighting.

The best approach might be to flight the teams and play for Net in each flight. In addition, players in the 1st Flight could pay an additional amount if they want to compete for Gross. There would be a separate pool for the 1st flight only, based on how many teams paid into the Gross pool. The second and lower flights would not play for Gross, just Net.

Competitions are more fun when the players or teams are somewhat evenly matched and everyone has a chance at winning.

[WillieT]

Having only played casually, this discussion on flights and handicaps is intriguing.   I really need to read up more on how all this works as I have primarily played casually and was never part of the winning team (however one Sat morning round, three of my partners won part of the prize money, but not I as I was lumped with another group (the losing one) - still trying to figure that one).  

[Brock]

I like having gross and net as it might increase participation. Gross is king and what really matters, IMO. 

Slightly off topic, but I don’t like formats where you flight after day 1 and play within your flight day 2. IMO it somewhat rewards better players at our club who played poorly on day 1 and penalizes higher handicaps who played well day 1. I’d prefer to chop into divisions at the start and play based on handicap. I’m sure others have different perspectives.