What a finish to a golf league.

[Pa Jayhawk]

Played in the final round to our golf season last night. Our team had won the first half, we had 28.5 points in the 2nd half and were 2.5 points up (thought it was 3.5, but found out there was a misprint from the prior weeks paper) on the second place teams points, with 6 points to go. The winner of the first half and second half play for the championship. We needed to win 3 to win both halves and the championship by default,as the third place team was still in contention. You get 1 for each match, and 2 for overall on most holes won by a team. In my match, I was 2 up with 4 to go. My short game was very suspect, and called myself on a double hit on a pitch on the second shot from 38 yards into a very short par 4 after getting more carry than I wanted off the tee with a 7w. Losing the hole by one. Halved the next after making up from a drop area, for a penalty off the tee. Dropped the next, where I was giving a stroke but lost the hole outright. Went into the last hole with both matches in our foursome square. My partners opponent almost drove the par4, just left and short. My opponent actually got a text as we were going to the green with everyone on in 2, that both of the other 2 matches were tied. I parred, the other matched halved theirs to send them to Extra holes, then my opponent left his 4 footer on the rim to give me a one hole win. Had to be a tough loss for him.

The other two in our group preceded to halve the next Par 3 hole as we get a text that the other match, our guy lost in what we assumed to be the first extra hole and tieing the overall match and only assuring us 2 points, and the other they are playing the second extra hole. In our group, my teammate hits in the woods, chips out and got on in three. Other guy on in two. Get text that the other match is in a third hole. By now it is pretty dark, can't even really read the greens. Other guy 3 putts, my teammate 2 putts to halve the hole the other guy forgot my partner chipped out and thought he lost the hole until we told him. They were trying to decide if they could even get another hole in because of darkness, or maybe finish at another time. Get text from other group that our guy won on the third extra hole.

We then got to talking, and confirmed that the other match they won was in extra holes and not regulation. We realized that we had assured the win by one hole, as total holes won is only for regulation, extra holes only count in relation to who won the match. So we left it up to the other guy on whether to continue their match, and he decided it would be best to end in a draw due to darkness, and they didn't think finish that match with someone losing was right for the circumstance..

This was our second championship in the three years in the league, lost last year by 1 hole after each team won two matches. But I doubt I've been in too many matches that compared to how this one finished. As much I hated to see how my opponent lost, I probably could not have stomached had I lost, in part to losing focus on the double hit.

 

[acarty]

Well, congrats dude!!! I have to say, that is some weird scoring. taken me a little while to read through that and understand!!

Either way, good work, and a shame for the other guy losing that way!

 

[Pa Jayhawk]

The scoring is a little weird, I think the reason they do it not only to discourage people from sandbagging. In that if you win your match, you still need to try and win every hole for the sake of winning the 2 points for your team. So if you rack up the score for the sake of your handicap, and your team loses the match, you have some explaining to do with your team. Even more so, because with exception to our last match, you usually do not know how the other half of your team is doing until the end, and they are 4 holes apart.

Even more unusual is that they will later adjust the scores to only allow a double bogie on any given hole. So while it is 100% handicapped, it does tend to favor the teams that have 4 better golfers. I have played as anything from a B to D player in prior years, and we tend to move around a bit. This year, I think our roles were a little more stable in performance. Our team is pretty close, with exception to a falloff and really poor start on my part earlier this year. Actually lost more matches in the first half (4 of 7) than I probably have in any other league for an entire year. Although as a result I ended up winning 6 of my last 7 matches in the second half (giving up one on the last hole) once I turned my game around. So I guess what comes around goes around. They only handicap based on the prior 4 rounds, and can have some pretty radical place changes on any given week. After the 2nd week we were in 6th and went to 1st after winning 12 straight points. Even after winning almost all of our points for weeks 5 and 6 (10.5 of 12), we were still only 2.5 up on a team that went from 5th to 2nd in week 6.