Countback in our Winter Eclectic

[LonnyLonsdale]

Hi,

I run a winter eclectic competition which is played by a group of friends at their home clubs (not all the same club). We use the difference between their total net score and the par for their course to determine who wins.

The competition ends in a few days' time but the top two players are both on -20 so it looks like we've got a tie at the top of the leaderboard.

I'm after some opinions on the fairest way to determine the winner. There's no money involved but there is a trophy so who's name gets engraved!

Most people shout "countback" as the way to decide but as they are on different courses the front and back 9, 6, 3 etc. holes may differ in difficulty. Initially I was going to declare the winner as the person who got to -20 first but that is causing controversy!

Another idea was to use countback but based on stroke index so I would look at their net scores for the hardest 9 holes (SI 1 - 9) then hardest 6, 3 etc.

Any other ideas?

I could just engrave both of their names on the trophy I suppose!!!

Paul.

 

[phil78]

Why not just countback but score compared to par rather than just total strokes , in the same way as the overall score is calculated?

 

[Foxholer]

Joint Winners seems best to me.

Unless published beforehand, any countback method is likely to be 'unfair'.

 

[duncan mackie]

Whilst I agree with Foxy I would personally run it on net score relative to course SSS rather than par in the first place - so logically I would favour the player with a higher course SSS if one exists!

Just engrave both names as joint winners.

 

[Fyldewhite]

Yep, agree with joint winners. If you don't decide how you decide ties before they happen then no matter which way you do it some will think it's the "wrong" way and unfair.

 

[mikejohnchapman]

Sudden death playoff might be fun - get everyone together to celebrate afterwards.

 

[woody69]

Sudden death playoff might be fun - get everyone together to celebrate afterwards.

That's a nice idea and how I would probably play it. I'd either suggest joint winners or play off at a neutral course and let the 2 involved decide what they want to do.

As an aside, the Stroke Index is not indicative of how hard the hole is, so trying to work out a winner based on that isn't necessarily fair. And of course for future competitions it'll be good to define what happens in case of a tie up front (but I'm thinking you probably already realise that now!)