Fun competitions

[Beedee]

At my club there's qualifying competitions on most Saturdays and Sundays. Stablefords are the most common, but quite a lot of medals as well. One thing I think we might be lacking are occasional "fun" competitions. We have some scrambles which are fun, but nothing for individuals. Something a bit different that wouldn't be a qualifier, but still makes you think about your game.

At a previous club there were

• 3 clubs plus a putter
• Play 18 holes but pick any three holes to play off the red tees.
• 2 kicks and a mulligan
• Laps of the course (medal play until you run out of handicap - then leave a marker for how many laps (or part there-of) you completed)
• and even just comps off the yellows in summer - a lot of the holes were quite different

I miss those comps. So do your clubs do any good ones?

 

[HampshireHog]

Green Keepers Revenge - Holes cut in illegal positions.

Cross Country

Night Golf

 

[duncan mackie]

We run most comps from your choice of tee - as Q events - no not much there.

There's a 4 club + putter, tied into a county event.

Generally the members want Q individual comps, and even the midweek mixed fun comps have taken a serious decline in recent years.

That said it's very rare that there are comps on both Sat and Sun so people can do what they wish - most join up in swindles!

 

[fundy]

Previous course had a lot of team comps where you would play things like best 2 from 4, yellow ball, scrambles etc often mixed teams too plus all the pairs variables, was nice to not play all comp golf as strokeplay, all very well supported. Complete opposite to DMs club above it seems in what the members wanted

 

[Beedee]

Green Keepers Revenge - Holes cut in illegal positions.

Cross Country

Night Golf

Whats a cross country?

 

[HampshireHog]

Whats a cross country?

You play off one tee and finish on another green. Eg: 1st tee to 11th green. Normally, played as a scramble. Good fun going over trees and across fairways. Plus the odd 700 yd hole thrown in.

 

[Crazyface]

You play off one tee and finish on another green. Eg: 1st tee to 11th green. Normally, played as a scramble. Good fun going over trees and across fairways. Plus the odd 700 yd hole thrown in.

Isn't this a bit dangerous?

 

[Deleted member 21258]

You play off one tee and finish on another green. Eg: 1st tee to 11th green. Normally, played as a scramble. Good fun going over trees and across fairways. Plus the odd 700 yd hole thrown in.

My son played this at one club as a junior comp and thought it was brilliant

 

[HampshireHog]

Isn't this a bit dangerous?

In what way? I’m not endorsing you try outside of an organised comp.

 

[The Fader]

For one Saturday last year we set the course up as 18 par 3's. Hole lengths varying from 90 yards to 210 yards.

Imaginative placement of tees such as on other fairways, places you wouldn't usually play your approach from or on the practice ground etc. so not every hole was just a shorter version of the standard hole.

Went down well with 95% of members and will likely be repeated again this year.

Interestingly only 2 players in a field of 100+ beat their handicap!

 

[trevor]

I’ve only played cross country golf once but remember it was great fun.

 

[ArnoldArmChewer]

We have a few 'fun' events which are midweek & combined with food/drink after, they are usually 9 holes and are very well attended.

Greenkeepers revenge
Cross Country
Masters Par 3

 

[Fabia999]

Green Keepers Revenge - Holes cut in illegal positions.

Cross Country

Night Golf

Love the idea of night golf. How was it?

 

[HampshireHog]

Love the idea of night golf. How was it?

Good fun, we did in Late in the year so by the time we went out it was properly night and the only thing you can make out is the LED’s on the course. Hardest part was putting as you couldn’t see any slopes on the green.

 

[need_my_wedge]

We have a cross country on News Year Day. Always fun to play and now a family tradition, usually get about 6 holes made up across the course. Not actually that dangerous, the course is planned, and only people in the cross country on the course at the time. Often find groups of 5 or 6 playing together.

Captains drive in is 2 clubs and a putter.

These are two of my favourite comps of the year, especially having won both of them in the past.

 

[nickjdavis]

Given we are a club stuck out in the country a lot of our membership was drawn from a multitude of towns/villages in the surrounding area and we used to have a "Village Competition".

Each "Village" (a loose term that covers anything from towns with populations in the 10's of thousands down to small hamlets) would be represented by a team of 6 players who all lived in that village. Each team had to have at least one lady golfer in it and each team could have one "outsider" who didn't live in the village. If a village had enough golfers then a "B" and sometimes a "C" team could also be cobbled together.

The competition was played as three ball matches with three players from different teams in each group. Was a simple stableford and the player with the highest stableford score in each match earned 3 points for his team, 2nd place got 2 points. Players scoring the same scores shared the points for both positions (so 2.5 points each if two folks shared 1st place).

There were bonus half points for the winner of the longest drive, nearest the pin and for the highest individual stable ford score.

Team who earned the highest number of points were the winners....ties were settled based on the combined stableford score of the entire team.

What was fun about it was that the scores were recorded on a big whiteboard in the clubhouse as the results from each match rolled in Eurovision style...no one left the clubhouse early as folks would gather round the whiteboard, trying to work out from what they had heard out on the course who was likely to win what...and slowly the potential winners would be narrowed down to just two and the tension slowly mounted whilst the final matches were completed.

Sadly we don't play it anymore as folks move around and its become ever harder to create viable teams for some of the locations and also the nature of it really only works if folks can commit to spending the day up at the club whilst all the matches are played in order to generate the "atmosphere" of the fun day.

 

[Wolf]

My club has recently done a flag comp where you tee off on the first and then proceed to play as far round the course as you using your handicap so for example an 18h/cap gets 90 shots and once they've played their 90th they put a flag in the ground of where that shot finished. Furthest round the course wins.

Played a few fun events at my first course years back.

Cross Country was brilliant the highlight an 800 yard hole.

Night golf 3 hole shoot out.

One of my favourite ones though was only run for one year Gruesomes. Think greensome but instead of picking your best shot from the tee you had to play the worst one. It made for a good laugh, my dad and I actually won it, would love to play that again but maybe in a matchplay format where the opponents pick your worst shot..

 

[Orikoru]

My club has recently done a flag comp where you tee off on the first and then proceed to play as far round the course as you using your handicap so for example an 18h/cap gets 90 shots and once they've played their 90th they put a flag in the ground of where that shot finished. Furthest round the course wins.

Played a few fun events at my first course years back.

Cross Country was brilliant the highlight an 800 yard hole.

Night golf 3 hole shoot out.

One of my favourite ones though was only run for one year Gruesomes. Think greensome but instead of picking your best shot from the tee you had to play the worst one. It made for a good laugh, my dad and I actually won it, would love to play that again but maybe in a matchplay format where the opponents pick your worst shot..

That's the only way it makes sense since picking 'worst shot' for yourself can be subjective. i.e. 200 yards up in the trees or a 100 yard duff up the fairway - arguments for either of them being the 'worst'.

 

[Wolf]

That's the only way it makes sense since picking 'worst shot' for yourself can be subjective. i.e. 200 yards up in the trees or a 100 yard duff up the fairway - arguments for either of them being the 'worst'.

No argument at all if its 200yards up in the trees of course that's your worst shot as the penalty drop is worse than playing from further back in the fairway. Or if no drop you have to hack it out sideways.

Quite easy to distinguish which is the worse of 2 shots. No argument either way at all.

 

[Grant85]

I'd say turn the whole course into a par 3 with tees moved to 150 to 200 yards from each green.

Could be good for some of the shorter par 4s that people are generally hitting a short wedge into, to suddenly make it a 180 carry onto the green.