Translation please?

[SiberianDVM]

Senior men are invited to compete in the second annual Senior Challenge, which takes place May 10-12 at Sunset Hills Country Club in Carrollton. This event is open to male amateur golfers age 55 and older as of May 10 with USGA Handicap Indexes of 3.0 or above. The field of 144 will be flighted and the format is 54 holes using the Stableford scoring system.

I'm new to this tournement stuff. Does this mean your handicap has to be better or worse than 3.0? What's flighted? I have vaguely heard of the Stableford scoring system, but don't really know how it works.

[Rockford35]

Worse than 3.0.

Flighted means that each player plays at a different level for the Stableford points. If you have a handicap of 18, Dave's is 10 and mine is 4, each hole defines whether or not we get a stroke (or two) towards "par" to make things even accross the board. If I get a par on the hole, I get zero points, while Dave gets 2 and you get 5 (or whatever the point system happens to be). For Dave, that would be like a birdie for him to par the hole and for you, like an eagle. This way, it puts everyone on a level playing field.

Stableford is just a points scheme. It's usually done like this:

More than 1 over fixed score (or no score returned) - 0 points
One over fixed score - 1 point
Fixed score - 2 points
One under fixed score - 3 points
Two under fixed score - 4 points
Three under fixed score - 5 points
Four under fixed score - 6 points

Everyone basically totals their points from this list.

Four under. HA! (This would happen should the event organizers change the par on certain holes to make things easier for higher handicappers, but you're still looking at holing a 3 wood on a par 5 or something crazy...)

R35

[Slingblade61]

worse......4, 8, 12, 20 and so on.

Flighted means the handicaps will be mixed A flight are your low handdicappers and D flight would be people like me, upper 20's

Each team has one player from each flight, ABCD

Stableford is the scoring method and each team recieves points based on their gross score.

2 or more over par 0 points 1 over par 1 points par 2 points 1 under par 3 points 2 under par 4 points 3 under par 5 points and so on..

I'm pretty sure this is mostly correct.

[SiberianDVM]

Jeez, and I thought gin rummy was complicated. I can't even keep the rules of golf straight. How the heck am I gonna know if I win or not? Maybe I should enter and just wait until they hand me the trophy.

[Eracer]

R35 - I understand you to mean that a 10 will get a stroke on the 10 hardest holes, a 5 on the 5 hardest holes, etc. But what about a 20? Does he get a stroke on all 18, plus an additional stroke on the 2 hardest? Also, aren't you only supposed to get 80% of your index? So if I'm a 15, I get 15 x 80% = 12
Or is the 80% already calculated in the index? Or is this just too complicated to really ever understand completely?

[Pa Jayhawk]

Originally Posted by SiberianDVM

Jeez, and I thought gin rummy was complicated. I can't even keep the rules of golf straight. How the heck am I gonna know if I win or not? Maybe I should enter and just wait until they hand me the trophy.

Look on the bright side, if you are a hacker like me, you get the same score for a double par as you would for a double bogie. We used to have a weekend competition between about 8-12 of us, whoever showed up, where the foresomes would compete against each other with the Stableford system and handicaps. Adding up all the scores at the end. It was a fun way to go with Weekend hacks, because a bad hole doesn't ruin you day by killing off the rest of the team.

They also use it at Castle Rock on the PGA Tour late in the summer, for those who didn't already know.

[Pa Jayhawk]

Originally Posted by Eracer

R35 - I understand you to mean that a 10 will get a stroke on the 10 hardest holes, a 5 on the 5 hardest holes, etc. But what about a 20? Does he get a stroke on all 18, plus an additional stroke on the 2 hardest? Also, aren't you only supposed to get 80% of your index? So if I'm a 15, I get 15 x 80% = 12
Or is the 80% already calculated in the index? Or is this just too complicated to really ever understand completely?

You are correct on the allocation of the strokes for over 18. The 80% is not usually used in most of the competitions I see, because it is not only more complicated but will usually weed out the higher handicap golfers, therebye weeding out that chunk of the proceeds as well.

edit 1 - also by flighting a competition You are usually competing mainly against people in the same handicap range, so not only is it highly unlikely that you will be giving more than a few strokes, but it eliminates a large part of the controversy over the 80% because again, you are usually within a few strokes as the rest of your group. Usually the controversy would still come into effect on "Net Low" over the entire competition, but you can't please everyone.

[Rockford35]

Originally Posted by Eracer

R35 - I understand you to mean that a 10 will get a stroke on the 10 hardest holes, a 5 on the 5 hardest holes, etc. But what about a 20? Does he get a stroke on all 18, plus an additional stroke on the 2 hardest? Also, aren't you only supposed to get 80% of your index? So if I'm a 15, I get 15 x 80% = 12
Or is the 80% already calculated in the index? Or is this just too complicated to really ever understand completely?

Yep, you have it there. And Jayhawk has touched on the 80%.

My apologies for not being clearer there.

R35

[Eracer]

Thanks R35. Thanks Jayhawk.