flighting a 4 man scramble

[CMYERS]

I am hosting a four man scramble, with around 25 teams. I am doing 3 flights, however I am unsure how to flight them. I have seen it done but It was a long time ago. CAN ANYONE HELP ME?

[sacm3bill]

I don't have advice for flighting (I think you average the handicaps of the foursome and take some percentage of that to get the team handicap), but wanted to caution you against using too many rules if you are already flighting. Some examples:

"At least 3 drives from every person must be used". This is to prevent the long hitters from being the only ones whose drive is being used.

"Can't follow your own shot" - i.e., whoever's ball was chosen as the best shot, that person could not hit the following shot.

"Can't follow your drive" - i.e., if your ball was used for the drive, you can't hit the second shot (but can hit any of the other shots for the hole).  A variation of the above, just not quite so penalizing.

I guess the rationale behind any of these rules is that you want to engage the whole team, and you don't want anyone to bring in ringers whose ball would always be the one used.  But the thing is, if you're using handicaps and flighting the teams, it doesn't matter if someone wants to load up their team with ringers because the handicaps/flighting will take care of that. So if you then put too many restrictions on the scramble, you are unfairly penalizing the teams who don't have as many good players.

Basically what I'm saying is I believe scrambles should apply a judicious set of rules, and if you're using handicaps then fewer rules are necessary to make it fair.

See this thread for more discussion on this issue: http://thesandtrap.com/t/34467/scrambling-liars

[CMYERS]

Thank you for input. I would not be able to figure out everyones handicap. I know there is way to do it. I know you take the top 3 scores, but I am not sure how to decide the 2nd and 3rd flights.

[sacm3bill]

Not sure what you mean about taking the top 3 scores, but I found this scramble handicap calculator which looks like exactly what you need to figure team handicaps:

http://www.leaderboard.com/SCRAMCAP.HTM

It even adjusts based on the rules you decide to implement - the "can't follow your own shot" rule for example is called a "Florida scramble", and requiring each person's drive to be used a minimum of four times is called a "Texas scramble".

Regarding flights, I'd suggest just pick something reasonable based on the distribution of team handicaps - put 1/3 of the teams in the first flight, next 1/3 in the second, last 1/3 in the third flight. There's lots of suggestions if you google "golf tournament flights" - one example:

http://www.ehow.com/how_6382793_set-up-golf-tournament-handicaps.html

If your players don't have established handicaps, you can use the scores from the scramble itself to determine their handicaps - the Scheid System is a popular way of doing that - google for more info if you're interested.

[WUTiger]

A two-county pro-am in central Missouri had an interesting scramble format:

Fivesomes, anchored by a PGA pro and a scratch amateur. The other three players were randomly assigned from the pool of available non-scratch amateurs.

In my most recent scramble, I played on a whoever team of a married couple, and two solo golfers (including me). We shot 1 under (three bogies and four birdies) out of 32 teams and ended up scoring in middle of fourth flight.

The winning team in Championship flight shot 18 under. The benefit scramble had been going on several years, and Championship flight was dominated by some of the semi-pro corporate scramble teams from the area.

A June scramble I played in had 24 teams, and split the field into two flights according to what scores your team shot. My team ended up 4 under, which put us in last place in the first flight. If we had missed one more short putt, we would have tied for lead in second flight.

A country club member-guest scramble is more likely than a benefit tournament to have team adjustments based on standard individual player handicaps.