In 1999 we used a variety of tournament formats. April was the infamous "flag" tournament, May and September were low net. June was Stableford. July was stroke four-ball. August was the "par" tournament. Which of these did you like? Which didn't you like? Why? What other formats should we consider?

-- Anonymous, October 17, 1999

Answers

I'm in agreement with Andrew (mark that down Jens) on the team event. Let's put it in April and make it the exhibition.

-- Anonymous, October 19, 1999

My favored structure would be stroke, stableford, stroke, par, stroke.

My reasons are the following: I think the results of the teams event can be pretty much predicted before the event began - I know I looked at the team listings prior to the event and picked out five pairings that had the right mix of steadyness and variance - my own team included - and these were the teams that were at the top. If we have the teams event it should not count to the tour championship or should count less somehow. This is difficult to do so I would favor the tour championship being five individual events. If we want to run a teams event I think a good way to do it would be to do it at the warmup event randomly drawing the pairings. It means we still have it but it doesn't count to the tour championship and we can have people pick their balls up early in the season when it doesn't matter. Why stroke, stableford, stroke, par, stroke? Before anyone says stroke favors the low handicap player I would respond that my one really bad hole of the year at Stow - an 8, made a huge difference on the day - aside from the fact that Allan played beautifully. Had we been playing other formats would have not mattered and I think it should matter. Stroke is the way all the tours play nearly all their events and for good reason. Andrew

-- Anonymous, October 18, 1999

I liked them all, but I know that there was some discussion of the four-ball format. If we did replace that, I would only suggest that we don't just replace it with low-net. I am not familiar with other formats, but I do like the variety.

-- Anonymous, October 18, 1999

I'm with Andrew. The team event is biased, I think, and I don't like the way it gets 2 people tournament-winning points. But you can't cut them in half, either, can you?

I'd love to find an alternative to stroke that plays almost the same, but I don't think it exists. I like the symmetry of stroke, variant, stroke, variant, stroke.

-- Anonymous, October 18, 1999