There is a rule in a tour I play that says if you shoot 4 strokes or lower than the minimum handicap of your flight you get disqualified and are promoted to the next flight in the next tournament. For instance, if you were in B Flight and shot a 77 you would be 4 shots below the minimum of 81 and you would be disqualified.
This rule seems to be geared toward sandbaggers coming in and lying about there playing ability to gain an unfair advantage. It was applied at the last tournament in a weird way and so when I got home I started looking and if it would have been applied the way the rule says, 7 players would have been disqualified the first day and 8 on the second day. I also noticed that this tournament produced the lowest scores of the year. The factors for this were wet greens, generous pin locations, lift, clean and place everywhere through the green, drop out of every bunker and no wind.
In my mind the rule should not be applied when these type of conditions exist and should not apply to players who have played numerous tournaments through the year and have an established tour handicap.
I am fairly new to tournament golf and was wondering if you guys have any thoughts.
You see intentional sandbagging a ton in city am tournaments all over that are flighted after first round. I’ve never seen a rule like this implemented, but I don’t hate it. I once played terrible in a first round, shot like 85 or something, then shot 69 the next day and won my flight by about 15 strokes. I didn’t feel good about it and that first round obviously wasn’t representative of my usual play. Bad rounds happen, so I hate the idea of DQing people, but I don’t hate moving players up to a higher flight. I kind of think tourneys should either be pre-flighted or done after both rounds to avoid this stuff.
4 shots off the minimum handicap seems like a decent cut off, but it feels like getting DQed for having a good round is a little harsh…
I guess it comes down to how often you have tournament rounds… honestly, if you are going to give strokes in a competitive environment, you basically need to have multiple events to make sure people can’t gain benefit from sandbagging early…
The problem with these mechanisms is they take some of the fun out of things, and punish honest people having great rounds…
I don’t have a good solution to the problem in general… but I wish sandbagging was treated more harshly than it is… without punishing people not sandbagging. Which is not simple.
Net golf isn’t real golf. Feel free to @ me. I refuse to play in events where a net is used. League is one thing, but a tournament is another thing. I refuse to shoot 70-70 and lose to someone who’s an 18 and shot 85-86. If you want everyone to feel like they have a chance, flight it and do it by hdcp before the tourney starts. Takes sandbagging out of it and puts everyone on as level a playing field as possible.
Simpatico…Net golf is a fun way to have an outing
It is not a “tournament”
That being said, winning your flight in a flighted stroke play event is still an accomplishment.
I am a second flight player… looking to win that flight and get into first flight
I 100% agree it’s silly for major competition… but if you have a limited club and want to host a tournament, it’s a necessary evil… if people don’t think they have a shot, they won’t compete.
Our club has a number of handicap driven events (a weekly game, and some other stuff) but all the major stuff is decided without handicap.
Ironically, even with lowered stakes, we still have some sandbaggers and some people who accuse others of sandbagging (wrongly, most of the time)… we had a 8 handicap get accused of sandbagging and 80% of his recorded scores over the past 2 years were in the 80s… his partner (a legit 20 handicap) just happened to shoot in the low 90s and carry them to a win… why the accuser blames the 8 cap is a mystery.
Thanks for your thoughts. Everyone that would have been DQ’d has played at least 5 of the seven tournaments this year so handicaps have been pretty well established.
What keeps coming to my mind was the scoring conditions we had. Could play the rest of the year and easily not have ideal low scoring conditions like we had.
So the people who played poorly ended up winning? Makes sense!
I’m in. I can play poorly without making it look like I’m playing poorly.
This is why I like match play. As opposed to medal play for amateurs. I do know players that don’t know how to count scores properly, like they make a snowman and count that, as opposed to maxing a 6 on a par 4. But shooting 4 under a handicap, DQs you, not realistic either. Like saying Jim Furyks 58 shouldn’t count because he was 10 under his handicap
Our club does most tournaments with net and gross payouts. There has been some questions of sandbagging, but never a hard and fast rule implemented. There was a member disqualified from some tournaments a couple of years ago. He was sporting about a 22 or so and all his regular rounds were high, but then in several tournaments close together went as low as 78 and won low net and net skins for some good money. Maybe if he’d spaced it out there would have only be suspicions, but no one shoots about 100 in all their casual rounds and then breaks 80 in their next 3 tournaments.
I do know it can easily happen one tournament, but usually not in multiple ones. My buddy was a 27 and shot an 82 in a big tournament and won everything net. He’s only done it once in 4 years though so he just had a great day when the planets aligned. I know he’s not a sandbagger and I wouldn’t want someone’s lone great day penalized.
Yeah, the high cap having a miracle round in the 80s doesn’t bother me… I think the “traditional “ sandbagger is 15-20 and will throw out a 75…
I love skins games, as I’m a 7 and just as likely to birdie the hard holes as I am the easy ones, especially the par 5s!
I played in a 2 day tournament once that had a great way to defeat sandbagging. At the end of the first round, each team made a blind draw for a white or black marble. After the second round, the tournament committee drew a black or white marble. If the marble was black, and you drew a black marble, your first round was what you shot in the flight. If it was white and you drew a white marble, your first round was used to flight you. Not knowing which day’s score would be used to win the flight, everyone had to play their best both days.
I’ve played in a bunch of tournies that doesn’t flight you until after the tournament is over - if there are 80ppl in the tourney and they have 5 flights, the top 16 end up in Championship the. The next 16 are 1st Flight, next 16 are 2nd flight, etc…
Flight winners are 1st, 17th, 33rd, etc…
Zero sandbagging this way as you don’t know where the flights fall until the tourney is over; I realize this may not be appealing to the 12 hdcp who shoots 78-78 legitimately but unless you are in Championship Flight and playing to the win the tourney overall, there is no perfect solution to flighting as long as sandbagging exists.