Matchplay format for a 3 ball.
Hi, my friends and I willshortyleave on our annual golf competition. We play two teams 6 people, that split into pairs and play fourball better ball matchplay, taking 3/4 of the difference off the lowest handicap. We are one player short this year for the first 2 days, so need to find the solution for the 3 ball, which will be on player vs the other two. It needs to still be a matchplay format, so what handicap allowance should we use to be fair?
charlie0166 Mon 08/09/08 09:33
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It's practically impossible to work out any handicap that would be completely fair. I worked through a scenario where the three players all had different handicaps (6, 14 and 20) and all players played to their handicaps. The team with two players won by 4, 6 and 7 holes depending on which two played together.
I did a 2nd scenario where all three players were scratch golfers. I gave them all a level par score involving pars, birdies and bogeys, but at different holes to each other. The team with two players won by seven holes.
You're never going to be exact, but I think you should give the solo player around six shots. Best way to do it is explain the diificulty to everyone before the teams are picked and get them to agree the handicap allowance first. That way, they can't moan about giving away too many shots or receiving too few. Best of luck.
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Just to clarify. The six shots should be in addition to the difference in handicaps.
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Question Author
Thanks Parsfan. I spent ages building an excel model designed to calculate handicaps, and it's very unsatisfactory. In the end, I think we have a simple solution - that the singleton plays two singles matches against the players in the pair, for half a point each.Normal handicap applies.
What do you think?
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I think you should all play singles until your 12th player arrives. You don't want complications on outings. You just want to play.
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The solution you have suggested would certainly give you a fair arrangement in terms of handicap, but as 10clarionSt says it does make things complicated. You can envisage a situation where the single player has a tricky putt and doesn't know whether to go for it to beat both opponents or settle for two putts to beat one and half with another. My preference would be to go for a stableford comp for the first two rounds, adding the total points and multiplying the six-man team's score by five-sixths. You could then play four balls for the last round.
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