Have you heard of "retrogression" to settle a tie?

[chriskzoo]

My buddy, who was born in Canada (apparently this is pretty common over there, at least at his club) was telling me about settling ties by "retrogression," which, even as a very avid golfer had never heard of.  Essentially it works like this:

You work backwards starting from the last hole to see which person/team played better up to the last hole that was not tied. If holes 18 & 17 were tied you would continue to the score on hole 16. The team with the HIGHEST score on 16 would win by retrogresssion. This is because that team had played better for 15 holes. Because they scored higher on hole #16, their score up to that hole was lower. A lot of people think the lower score wins but that is not correct because they would have had a higher score up to that point in order to finish with a tie.

So let's way you were playing a tournament and finished the last hole with a bogey 5 to card a 72.  The guy right behind you cards a birdie 3 to also finish at 72 and tie your for the lead.  By the retrogression method, you would win, even though you scored worse on the last hole, because it only took you 67 strokes to play the first 17 holes whole the other guy took 69 strokes to play the first 17 holes.

Took me a while to wrap my head around it.

[grubby98]

The few scrambles I have played in they just choose a random hole out of a hat and whoever has lowest score will win. I have heard of that but I hate playing in scrambles so not much experience with me.

[davedove]

Originally Posted by grubby98

The few scrambles I have played in they just choose a random hole out of a hat and whoever has lowest score will win. I have heard of that but I hate playing in scrambles so not much experience with me.

In the scramble i participate in at work, they do something similar but they choose the hardest hole (by handicap) for the determination.  This happened to me last year.  My team tied for first, but we did worse on that hole, so we got second place (We had some good hitters on the team and I managed to do well with my short game for the round).

[Fourputt]

My Men's club used to use a "card playoff" to break ties for first place in a flight.  What they did was to start at hole 15 and compare the cards of the tied players.  If both made the same score on 15, it went to 16, and on.  If still tied through 18, then it went back to #10 and continued.  The first player to "win" a hole was declared the winner of the flight.  Basically it was a virtual sudden death playoff.

Now they do a real playoff for first place, sending the players out on either #1 or #10 depending on the flow of the course and which hole is easiest to get out on.