questionable behavior (cheating)

[clubchamp98]

Two lads at ours had a £1000 bet . Winner keeps his money loser pays Alder Hey kids hospital.
Both 6 cap arguing what was best good driving or good short game.
Got a bit heated and ended up on the tee with cheque in hand.
The short game player won but as he’s a six cap his driving wasn’t to shabby.
Was a great game to watch.

 

[clubchamp98]

The chances of me getting a 2 are significantly reduced on anything other than a perfect day. Not impossible, I have done it, but the odds are strongly against me. If the incentive is not there, why pay in?

I've played at clubs previously where I would enter every time, I am not anti 2's, but the ones at my current course are not great to be honest, they are not short iron holes.

It is not through lack of trying, I can assure you.

Horses for courses.

 

[patricks148]

The chances of me getting a 2 are significantly reduced on anything other than a perfect day. Not impossible, I have done it, but the odds are strongly against me. If the incentive is not there, why pay in?

I've played at clubs previously where I would enter every time, I am not anti 2's, but the ones at my current course are not great to be honest, they are not short iron holes.

It is not through lack of trying, I can assure you.

plenty don't go in ours, but i don't get why, its only £1 and if you look across the handicaps in the twos at ours theres always a few high handicaps in. We have two shortish par 3's one is often not more than 140 the other 160 ish , i would say everyone has a chance.
though some are just tight my mate slow Dave doesn't he's off 3, i only found out when i was the only person to get a 2 in one comp, 80 entries and i got £36 and had a moan about it... the tight bugger

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

I recently came 3rd in successive roll-ups. I won £6 and £10. Wooo. But it's now harder for me to win again as over the two rounds my roll-up handicap has been cut from 8.4 to 6.8. It won't revert to my club handicap until end of main playing season (end September)

When we win a few £s in our roll-up our h/cap adjustment system makes it harder to win again - we try and stop same people winning repeatedly so as to spread winnings around as many of our roll-up group as possible.

Always do our 2s as good chance of winning a few £s. Also if my score in the comp has gone in the front 9 I have something to keep positive about. I don't consider that there might be any form of cheating and think that at my place it's pretty rare.

 

[Deleted Member 1156]

The handicapping at my previous club rollup was pretty simple. If you won you got a 2 shot cut for the following week. If you won again, 4 shots etc until you stopped winning but you reverted back to your normal handicap if you didn't win. Simple and worked well.

 

[rksquire]

Seen both sides of it, in competition and social golf, and with regular golfers and some 'annual' golfers. My old football friends I ignore - we play maybe 2 or 3 times a year, it's a days craic and if Big T wants to 'set' his ball up or kick it back onto the fairway that's fine, he's taking 120 shots anyway and that's the way he enjoys the day. I've also seen, since we've been back playing, regular golfers, who should know better, constantly identify their ball in the rough, try to claim free drops from certain areas, taking advantage of the current bunker rules (one guy moved his ball back about 4ft rather than 6" because there was a high lip and argued he was allowed to do so!). I've seen good and bad sportsmanship on separate Captains days.

But, recently we did 'report' an incident. There's internal OOBs at one of our par 5, but the next par 4 hole playing the opposite direction is not. We played the par 4, coming up to play our 2nd shots, there's a ball on our fairway, the OOB stakes are lined between the 2 holes, but at the final stake (about 200 yards from the green) you are meant to line up with the single stake across the par 4 fairway. As we pass the imaginary line between the 2 stakes we see it is easily about 20 yards OOB; the player is walking across from the par 5 and asks if he's in or out and we tell him it's out; My FC, who is closest offers to throw it back but the guy says "beep it, I'll play it for fun". On the next hole the guy who offered to throw it back jokingly says he probably didn't tell his partners it was OOB! Checked the results on Sunday, guy in question had won the front 9 - looked at his card, he had a '5' on the hole in question. It's a 620 yard par 5, we didn't see him play any other ball (provisional). Given there was a prize involved, it has been mentioned, and it is to be looked at.

 

[nickjdavis]

Personally, I think that we should go back to the old maximum winnings rules as part of having an amateur status. Once you get cash prizes of £50 and above or on the bigger, national comps with thousands of pounds in prizes, you are going to attract the element who will do what it takes to win. Personally, the £30 max seemed right to me.

I've built the prize structure for comps at my club based on the number of entries. As the field gets bigger the total prize pot gets bigger....it averages out that at around 85% of the entry costs are returned to the competitors....the committee keep 15%. However, rather than continuously increasing the size of payouts for 1st , 2nd, 3rd place what happens is that the rate of increase for these places slows markedly above a certain level (around £35 for 1st place) and prizes then get introduced for 4th, 5th places etc...sometimes even paying out a token amount (say a fiver) for as low as 8th place if the filed is big enough.

I feel that this approach lessens the overall focus on "winning money" in club comps and also provides a bit of enjoyment for players who might win £15 for finishing 6th....covers their entry fee and pays for a couple of beers afterwards.

I'd rather see lower amounts of money spread around more people, than just a small handful of individuals winning significant sums. I guess that mirrors my views on the National Lottery as well...but that's a different discussion.

As for 2's sweeps....on balance simply they favour the better player...they are a skills based reward (rather than being a handicap based reward) and I can understand why higher handicappers might not be keen on them. Having said that...we have a 2's sweep at our club and everyone enters without exception.

 

[HomerJSimpson]

Our club comps have an options 2's comp (£1) and optional ball sweep - basically a raffle to win some balls (also £1) so with the mandatory £3 entry the most the majority fork out for is £5. However we always run a book for each comp, paying out for 1st, 2nd and 3rd. It is optional but once you're in the group you are in for good and can't dib in and out depending on how your game is. Usually only £3-£4 (£10 for majors and pairs events) and has always been a bit of fun. The group is usually made up of those in our Saturday/Sunday roll ups

Talking of roll ups, the Saturday one is £2. We usually play in fours and so we have a team prize. The losing pair will put in for the winners so you could pay £4 (your £1 and £1 from one of the PP's) or £2. If we have a couple of three's they'll have a little team prize too but clearly will only put £1 for the team plus their £2 for the main bet. We pay out on 1st and 2nd but we also have handicap cuts (two shots x 3 weeks for the winner and one shot x 3 weeks for runner up - and cuts are concurrent so win money while already cut and a further cut is added). Before we did this two years ago the same faces were winning regularly but now it has spread the cash around and we had something like 25 different people picking up cash. The fact that only have 30-35 on the books and a few of those don't play regularly shows the money is shared.

The Sunday one is £4 winner take all. No team prizes. However the winner then has to buy everyone a drink so rarely walks away with too big a prize. I don't think there is anyone is these roll ups that would ever contemplate cheating to pick up a few quid so I don't see any reason why we shouldn't play in these or gamble a quid on whether I@ll be lucky in a raffle and good enough to make a two

 

[sunshine]

At the risk of courting controversy I'd suggest that the bulk of the cheating goes on around handicaps. People who always seem to do well in "fun" comps or team comps but play very few qualifying comps and never seem to score well when they do. People who when you see them play you cannot reconcile their handicap with their game.

To be fair, many people play better in "fun comps" when there is less pressure, but then struggle in a big medal.

I can look like a scratch golfer one day, then a beginner the next. We all can. I noticed a 7 handicapper scored fewer than 18 points in our competition last weekend. Here is a guy shooting 100 when I know he can shoot in the 70s.