Annual Friends Golf Trip - How to play medal and Ryder Cup style event???

[weezel514]

Happy Open Champ week everyone! 

 

We have a group of 12 guys that do a yearly golf trip and tournament. This year we are doing North Carolina with the courses being Tobacco Road, Pine Needles, Mid Pines, Southern Pines. We usually do a medal play event, but wondering if anyone here has experience and tips for doing medal along with a Ryder Cup style team event. The handicaps for our group range from scratch to about 26, so there is quite a discrepancy. This may be a way to bring added fun to it as well. We can't be the only ones to have thought up this option, so looking to see what else this great golf community knows of. 

 

Cheers

Michael

[st1800e]

Cumbersome.   Players take a different  mindset to playing shots in a match than they do in stroke play.  An example is a player needs a putt to tie a hole in match play and the next putt doesn’t matter. But in stroke play ,the next putt does matter.  
And a putt can be given in match play, but needs to be holed in stroke.  
 

You might consider doing the whole trip in match play. We had a Ryder cup trip for 25 years, always match play.  The matches were aligned with similar handicaps, no strokes.  Always worked.  Plenty of upsets too.  

[ArtMBgolf]

You can make it Ryder Cup style, but play medal play, if you want medal winners each day. 
  
Assuming 6 vs 6, best 5 scores of 6 man team count for team total, Best ball of partners, Singles match.      
 
You can forget having 2 teams for trip and have daily tournaments. 
BB of partner, best 2 of 4, etc.    

[Warrior42111]

There's ways to do it. Issue is and mentioned above mindset. In a  individual medal competition you want to score well but have to avoid a blow up. In ryder cap it's a match and you play more aggressively as dictated. Imagine having to decide between an aggressive approach on 18 to win you match or a safe play and 2 putt to win the medal. 

 

That being said you could make all the holes worth a point, and then do match play events. Most points wins the match and ryder cup, and you can enter scores for the medal. I would stipulate to gimmies in the match play since you have medal involved as well.

[shaneyank]

It's been covered by the other responses, and I'll agree, mixing medal and team match play just doesn't work. Maybe you can consider two distinctly different aspects of the trip. Two days team and two days individual?

 

FWIW, I host a 20 person Ryder Cup event each year with friends. One day. Three formats. Thirty six holes. So, you can definitely made a Ryder Cup event work well with only 2 rounds of golf and offer a different, individual focus to the remaining rounds.

 

Here is how we run our RC event. We learn something each year and almost find ways to improve:
https://www.eastbayrydercup.com/

[Petethreeput]

Here is my thought, but perhaps our group are outliers.  We took 8 to Pinehurst a couple of years ago.  We had day money for the medalist, birdies and deuce pots, and then the team game was aggregated and everyone played everyone.

 

But, and this is where it might differ from other serious golfers, we went to experience Pinehurst and have a hootenanny away from the grind of work.  The golf is the reason for the trip (and the excuse) but it was more about hanging out and experiencing something new.  Our handicaps were between 2-9 and one 15.

 

We had a great time discussing the day money and frankly, when it came time for the Ryder Cup portion it was meh in regards to generating the conversation most golfers enjoy.

[SNIPERBBB]

You can't run stroke and match play together really because match play once you can't beat your opponent, you don't play anymore, on the hole or the rest of the holes.

 

You could do what our league does is play stroke play and you win a point for each hole you beat your opponent and a half point for a halve. If the stroke play is against the field, you can't give putts. Everyone must finish the hole unless you want to do a score cap per hole.

[Mostly]

The old Dunhill Cup at St Andrews used to use what they called “medal match play”.  It was a 3 man team knockout competition.  So, three 1 v 1 games, each decided by the lowest score.

 

You could have six 1 v1 games each decided by the lowest net score to get the team element, at the same time each player has a score for each round for the individual medal element.  (Personally, I’d do it using Stableford as that is a bit more forgiving and keeps everyone in the game which keeps it fun).