Weekly Par 3 Tournaments?

[RachaelxLeah]

I want to start weekly tournaments on the Par 3 course I work at. We did leagues at the last course I worked, but I want this to be a variety of fun tournaments instead of a league. Would using handicaps be the most fair way to do these? Or using different flights instead? I have an idea of how I want to keep points and information documented in an excel worksheet, but I want to know what would be the most fair way to pair players up.

[mneumann]

We used to run summer tourneys at a par 3 i worked at. We would get 30-40 guys for 9 holes after work one night a week.

It mostly turned itself into a skins game because even the high cap guys were willing to throw in 10 bucks for Gross skins figuring they had a reasonable chance to birdie 125 yd holes vs trying to play a skins game at a regulation course.

We would pay a nominal amount to low gross and first and second low net. No flights because only 40 guys max for 9 holes so there wasn't enough people and the handicap disparity wasn't huge on a par 3 9 hole course.

We used a Callaway scoring system the first 2 times someone played for their cap (drop x number of worst holes based on score) and then after 2 rounds would start a handicap with some % of average score over par based on number of rounds. We also capped everyone at 9 strokes if I remember right.

There wasn't any season long points or anything which I think got us more play as people were just willing to come out once or whenever they could without feeling like they were paying into a prize fund they couldn't win if they couldn't come every week.