Every year, my club has inter-club match with other clubs in the area.
There are 10 country clubs with each club sending their Club Pro and 11 club members who qualify through a series of qualifiers.
Our club doesn't usually fare very well in the match, we usually finish anywhere from 4th to 9th place. This weekend we had a post-mortem on our last match (we finished 9th), which happened about 6 weeks ago.
First the format of the matches:
Each Club divides their 12 men into 6 2-man teams.
We play 36 holes, all in one day with a shotgun start. The tournament is NOT Handicapped. Each nine holes is a different format:
Better Ball
Scramble
Chapman
Alternate Shot
Only the low 5 scores in each format is used for each team.
Our team is normally comprised of 8 players who make the team every year plus 4 others whose talent level is not enough for them to make the team every year.
The club pro is acting Captain and is responsible for dividing the 12 players into the smaller twosomes.
He generally pairs the better players with the lesser skilled players. He tries to pair longer hitters with shorter hitters and naturally avoids any personality clashes. This is the system that I think works best
Our best player has indicated it would best to team our best players with each other and the worse players with each other, as the format is going to toss the high scores. I can see the point of his argument, but the chances are we are going to have two pretty high scores if we pair with that strategy.
This is the typical handicap of our team:
Player 1----- +3 handicap
Player 2------ 0 Handicap
Players 3-8--- 3-6 handicap
Players 9-12-- 6-10 handicap
technically the pro is a "zero" handicap, but realistically he plays to about a 6-8 handicap. Frankly, I am not sure if forced to qualify for the team that he would make it consistently. But by the bylaws of the tournament, he is automatically exempt.
FTR, I have made the team every year (except one time) since 1991. I am generally one of the top 4 qualifiers.
how would you divide the team?
Better players with lesser skilled?
or Better players with each other?
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