For the last year during Wichita league there hasn't been enough Ams to play Pro Am doubles in Wichita. Therefore we have been doing random flip with a stroke system. Problem is An Am always seems to get Cali. Our club gives Ams full Cali..Which means 2 shots for every shot and 3strokes. I think this isn't fair and was wondering where this Full Cali crap came from?
I've been playing for 10 yrs and never heard of this full Cali until this year.
Is this just a Wichita thing or do other clubs use this Full Cali too?
When I started playing there was no handicaps or pro am doubles. If 2 pro got teamed up oh well get better!! I miss those days
If you're a bad golfer, and you get Cali at our random flip, you may be awarded full Cali. The rules seem up for grabs, because I'd thought that Full Cali meant you got 2 throws from every lie? And regular Cali was just one mulligan per hole? Maybe we should define the terms!
I never agreed with taking full cali away from a pro.When playing for a par.Two pro`s are allowed 6 full shots.A pro cali gets only 4.....very unfair to this day in my opinion.
When you have to choose between your woman and discgolf,don`t be stupid-choose the discgolf.
Many clubs to this day play random draw doubles. This often results in two beginners stacked up against two pros. Obviously, this kinda system results in discouraging amateur players from participating.
For singles play, our club has been using a handicap system. It has been modified a little over the years, but currently uses 80% of the difference between the scoring average and 52. 8 most recent rounds are used. This means a slight advantage goes to the better player.
We've always had 3 divisions, pro and am and rec, where the pros play straight up without handicap, ams play for credit and use their handicap, and recs play for free with no prize or ace fund. Any player can play in any division and all scores from all divisions are included in the handicaps for each player.
Now for doubles, we've played straight pro-am doubles for many years. This format works great when you have an equal number of pros & ams. But when the numbers are not equal, many players had to be moved up or down to the other division.
In my opinion, this was unfair for several reasons. Perhaps the biggest is that the same players were getting screwed on the deal every time.
So we started playing random flip with strokes for ams. We play pro-am teams are straight up, pro-pro teams have to add 3 strokes at the end of the round, and am-am teams subtract 3. Ladies get an extra stroke subtracted. This has worked out pretty well and fairly, in my opinion. The biggest complaint is that if it is "3 strokes per am" you should let the am-am team subtract 6 and let the pro-pro team's score stand. It makes no difference relatively. I just make the pro-am teams even to make the scores compatible with pro-am scores. Perhaps if the turn out continues being disporportionate, we should make the switch. It would be simpler and probably get more approval.
California (odd number of players with one player throwing without a partner) throws a wrench into the works. A lot of leagues handle Cali differently. Some require double pay since the payout is double, etc.
The way we do it is for single pay, with players getting double pay if they cash. Standard cali is one mulligan per hole, with the player getting to choose which shot to throw from after the mulligan is taken. For a good pro, this is an advantage over a pro-am team, but still short of equality for a pro-pro team. For a not so good player, Cali is nearly always a curse when compared to getting a pro partner.
So I modified it to try to make it fair. First off, if a player absolutely does not want to be Cali, they can let me know and we can do a flip for those who want to be cali to establish the cali first and then flip for teams.
For players with handicaps 8 or higher, they get regular cali only with 3 strokes. Usually pros have a handicap of 5 or lower. So this does not give them an advantage on a pro-am team or a pro-pro team taking 3 positive strokes. Even with the 3 strokes, they are still at a slight disadvantage.
For players with an handicap of 11 or higher: in addition to the 3 strokes, they get full cali, which is a mulligan on each throw. Believe it or not, this usually equates to 3 strokes better per roundd or, more likely, less than that per round. So these players, even with this help, are still at the greatest disadvantage.
I agree that optimally these players shouldn't be getting cali. So I give the option to opt out.
Note that the 3 strokes for >7 and full cali for >10 used to be switched. I switched them to both be more fair, and to speed play with less chance of a player having full cali.
I think it is the most unfair when player have only played once or twice, usually on a long or short config, and have a handicap that isn't very accurate. This is a problem with singles as well. I don't think you want to come up with ways to punish people who are new to the league. If they come more often, the handicap will be pretty accurate within 3 times playing. The only real solution I could see to this, would be to play red and blue tees only. Right now we use short and long to give more variety.
So bottom line is that I have worked for a system that is the most fair. Simplicity is another priority, but behind fairness. It is difficult for most players to accurately observe "fairness" because of a bias towards their end of the spectrum of skill. Ams complain about pros having advantage and vice versa. I think the better player should have a slight advantage. For both singles and doubles, I still believe this is true 95% of the time or better. It would be difficult to make a chance that would increase this, but I am always open to ideas. For doubles, I also like mixing it up with other formats. Switch doubles, for example, can be a lot more fun, and is a better test of skill and strategy for both players, than straight best shot dubs.
Last edited by Schoen-hopper on Mon Dec 01, 2008 2:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Schoen-hopper wrote:Now for doubles, we've played straight pro-am doubles for many years. This format works great when you have an equal number of pros & ams. But when the numbers are not equal, many players had to be moved up or down to the other division.
In my opinion, this was unfair for several reasons. Perhaps the biggest is that the same players were getting screwed on the deal every time.
So we started playing random flip with strokes for ams. We play pro-am teams are straight up, pro-pro teams have to add 3 strokes at the end of the round, and am-am teams subtract 3. Ladies get an extra stroke subtracted. This has worked out pretty well and fairly, in my opinion. The biggest complaint is that if it is "3 strokes per am" you should let the am-am team subtract 6 and let the pro-pro team's score stand. It makes no difference relatively. I just make the pro-am teams even to make the scores compatible with pro-am scores. Perhaps if the turn out continues being disporportionate, we should make the switch. It would be simpler and probably get more approval.
This is tough. We had doubles two years ago as a random flip doubles. Attendance was VERY low and I thought we could get the figure up by switching format. I ran our doubles league last summer and made the change to a pro/am/beginner format. This format basically put one pro and one beginner together and had two adv ams together. With the attendance we had, this made the most sense. The scores were normally pretty fair and close. We got great attendance for the first half of the season and it dwindled down to about 4-6 people a week toward the end of the year. This year we focused on our singles league and didn't even do a doubles because of lack of attendance. With low attendance, it's tough to be fair in a doubles league. Sometimes the best way to do it was to hand pick teams so they are fair. No matter what you do, someone will always take issue with it....
for dubs up here, since i started we have allowed an adv player to buy in for full cali. am's get full cali free, and pro's just get screwed! i think a pro player playing cali should be able to be competitive with a pro/am team or adv/adv. as a pro i would much rather have a challenge. if you give me a chance to correct a mistake on every throw i make, i would hope that i can do it. side note, if you are cali here, you still have to pay ace twice for your second drive to count
I changed our doubles scoring to both simplify and make the players happy.
It'll now be 3 strokes subtracted at the end per amateur on the team. Pro-pro is straight up. Pro-am is -3. Am-am is -6.
Now the confusing part will be Cali. Since a pro Cali is equated with a pro-am team, the pro Cali will get 3 strokes subtracted. If the Cali player's handicap is 7 or higher, 3 additional strokes are given. If the Cali's handicap is 11 or higher, the 6 strokes plus full cali are given.
For the scratch golfer, Cali can be a sweet deal. For the cali that is 11 handicap or higher, even with the extra strokes and extra shots, it still won't equate them to a pro-pro team. That's why I like to give people the chance to opt out of playing Cali.
Worst case scenario is someone gets stuck with Cali that is a way underated player. For example: they've only played league once on a difficult configuration/ conditions and they are actually a much better player. I'll try to watch out for something like this.
