Another Ryder Cup Format Handicapping Question

[N8dogg2669]

Looking for a little insight here. We have a 20-man golf league. We just wrapped up our "regular season" and now for the first year (14-year league) we decided to do a 3-week Ryder Cup style event. We divided into 2 teams where normal teammates have to be on opposite teams. We are doing a 2-man best ball on week 1, a 2-man scramble on week 2, and a singles match for the final week and everyone is playing their regular partner in singles, with the exception of two teams. We have two teams that have a 25 handicapper on each team and the other players are a 7 and 11, so we just swapped those so that the 25's are playing each other and the 7 and the 11 are playing each other. It actually worked out well and I think the next biggest gap was like 5 shots so I think it can be handicapped effectively. I want to lower the strokes as much as I possibly can as we are playing NET for all of these. The scramble we are using A player 35% and B player 15% combined for the NET handicap, and singles is pretty self-explanatory.  So, here's my question, my handicap is the lowest of the group at a 5, would I reduce everyone in the league down by 5 and I play at a zero, or do you do it per match. For instance, one match we have Team A at a 12 & 15 against Team B at a 12 & 16, would this end up being Team A at a 0 & 3 vs Team B at a 0 & 4 in the match or would it be Team A at a 7 & 10 vs Team B at a 7 & 11? Basically, the question I am asking is do you drop the entire field by the low handicap for the entire 20-man league or is it done per match by the lowest handicap in the match? I really want to get these down to as low as possible and in my head, it was going to be per match but now that I'm putting the cards together, I am second guessing what is the fair and correct way to do this. Again, the whole goal is to have the least number of "pops" per round. This is also match play, not aggregate. Any feedback would be appreciated.  Should have mentioned our handicaps range from 5-25, so it's quite a spread. 

[puttnforthe8]

Well - this becomes a purely philosophical question/answer imo:

1.  One side says if you drop down to the lowest cap - you are making it tougher for high handicaps.  Reason:  They are getting their pops only on the hardest holes where the tendency (presumptive outcome) is they will blow up/shoot much higher scores.  So you are favoring the lower caps.
2. The other side is you are favoring high cappers because they will get 2 pops on some holes (if full cap) and pops on easy holes.

 

But since you are saying this is the team portion, not singles - you are (or should be) taking HC reductions - that is enough.  Scramble 35%/15%  BB 50% for example

 

 

Personally, I would do:

Scramble 35%/15% 

BB 75% of Cap

Singles - play off lowest HC in each match

[N8dogg2669]

On 9/13/2024 at 3:17 PM, puttnforthe8 said:

Well - this becomes a purely philosophical question/answer imo:

1.  One side says if you drop down to the lowest cap - you are making it tougher for high handicaps.  Reason:  They are getting their pops only on the hardest holes where the tendency (presumptive outcome) is they will blow up/shoot much higher scores.  So you are favoring the lower caps.
2. The other side is you are favoring high cappers because they will get 2 pops on some holes (if full cap) and pops on easy holes.

 

But since you are saying this is the team portion, not singles - you are (or should be) taking HC reductions - that is enough.  Scramble 35%/15%  BB 50% for example

 

 

Personally, I would do:

Scramble 35%/15% 

BB 75% of Cap

Singles - play off lowest HC in each match

 

So this is almost exactly what we did. We did the Scrambles at 35/15, BB was 100% of handicap since we use 100% for our league handicaps, and singles we used 100%. We had one person/team playing at ZERO in each match. Overall worked well. At the end of the day we ended up with Team A winning week 1 (4-1), Team B winning week 2 (3-2) and Team B winning week 3 (7-3). So overall it ended up 11-9. I think it worked very well as it came down to my match (Team B) and I won my match on the 8th hole of the singles match 2 & 1. So it was close. I do need to adjust some stuff for the year overall, but this turned out to be alot of fun and I am pretty sure it is here to stay with our golf league. I think putting partners on opposite teams and then playing each other in singles was pretty cool.