Scrambles where they only use your shots

[Password Is Taco]

Every year my department (I work for a large financial company) has a golf outing. It's all for fun and laughs so it's a scramble format and everyone is encouraged to participate.

 

I'm a scratch golfer and the past two years my team has won. Afterwards (when we're all good and drunk) the other three guys on my team always start blabbering about how "Except for a putt or two we only used this guy's shots all day."

 

For the most part they're right - at the very most we use 1 or 2 (full swing) shots from the rest of the group. For the rest of the year I get a few weird looks and remarks like "We're going to have to figure out better rules for this next year" whenever golf and/or the outing is brought up.

 

The teams are made to put the less experienced players with the more experienced players and the competition is all secondary - there are no money or prizes or anything, just office bragging rights. Should I feel weird about this? Next week is the golf outing (it will be my third) and I'm contemplating an illness to get out of it because of the weird looks I get from a few people.

 

Anyone else have this experience?

[atlanta golfer]

From my experience, that is just the way it is at company functions like that. One thing you might propose is to modify the rules so they have to use a certain number of drives from each player. That is a fairly common way to make sure everyone contributes.

[Rock Chalk Jayhawk]

Play a step aside scramble. If a player's shot is taken, that player steps aside for the next shot. This does not apply on the green.

[Yuck]

I have often had the experience where my ball was used on most or all full shots, but the team score was still ten or twelve shots better then my solo score would have been because the other three would drain puts, pitch close or show me the line with their missed putts. It is amazing how much better you can drive it on a dangerous hole if one of your partners has already plinked it 215 into the fairway. Also when you know the line for sure, and there is not danger of a three putt, you can putt much more confidently. Bottom line, your high hcp partners might think they only helped a couple shots, but in all likelyhood they make a much bigger difference then they think.

[Greenie]

[quote name='atlanta golfer' timestamp='1345841206' post='5529169']
From my experience, that is just the way it is at company functions like that. One thing you might propose is to modify the rules so they have to use a certain number of drives from each player. That is a fairly common way to make sure everyone contributes.
[/quote]


I used to play in a company function scramble. They paired everyone up as an A B C D player. Having to use everyone's drive twice per nine can be a real equalizer. Especially when you have to end up playing 20 yd toppers.

[RRFireblade]

Almost every scramble I play....seriously.

There are times when they don't even hit a ball after I do.

Problem is thats rarely wins us any events ,as good as I am rounds in the low 50 are asking a bit too much.

[MadGolfer76]

I play with:

My dad (60 years old) - 16 handicap
An older friend (63) - 15 handicap
Another older friend (72) - 20 handicap - former scratch player to whom age has not been kind.

Rarely do we use a drive other than mine. My dad hits it fairly straight, so the rest of the group just tries to hit one in the fairway so I can try to give myself a hernia on every hole by driving the shorter par 4's and cutting corners on par 5's. It tends to work well, actually, although I might as well pin a tail on myself and start wearing a wagon hitch.

The oldest guy in our group is a putting savant, however. You guys wanting to get better at putting should take a drive up check him out. Never seen anyone else putt like he does, whether on TV or...anywhere. I have never even heard a RUMOR of anyone so good at putting. One year he rolled in 15 ONE PUTTS - and we let him putt FIRST so he didn't even get a read! His choice - he just said, "You young fellas will just mess me up." It was absolutely absurd. We weren't even close to the pin sometimes either. 20 feet, 30 feet - didn't matter; it was going in. We just drove him up to the green and let him do his thing. The other group we were paired with was stunned after six holes, but stood up for us when people challenged the score we posted. We won net AND gross categories, so that didn't go over well - especially with 3 double digit caps in the foursome. Kinda ducked out the back and didn't stay for dinner. Ahem...

edit: ...and about 1200 bucks in skins, thank you very much.

[Guia]

It is frustrating when you get no help. In the early 80's I played a scramble and was given 3 visiting Japanese executives as partners. All 3 had no golf clubs and purchased full sets of Mizuno for the tournament, at the time Mizuno was really unknown to American players. These guys were all left handed and as far as I could see had little or no golf experience I soon found out. They also did not speak English very well, and my Japanese was worse than their English.

We shot 75 as a team and used my ball for each shot with 2 exceptions. Those exceptions were that I was so mad that I topped 2 shots badly and was forced to use their errant shots. At the end of play the Businessmen gave their full set of clubs, including bags, etc, to our caddies as a gift.

When we finished my buddies (I use that term lightly) had a great laugh on me. I was not so amused.

[Johnny]

Had that recently.. used almost all my second shots too.. I shot 75 on my own ball, best I could figure. Which was pretty accurate since I putted first a lot, just so I could keep my score

[Onewaggle]

I used to play in a corp affiliate scramble every year. Load of really bad golfers. The 5 years I played my team was the only one under par. Yes, that bad. After year 4 they asked me to play with only one other team mate. So two man scramble vs 20 teams of 4 man. We were under par again, and there were a lot of mad people. Despite the president of the association riding along with us so he could "chat about business" really he kept our score because he had heard a lot of guff about how my teams were always cheating.

That last year I donated our winnings back and offered not to play again as it was effecting our business relationships...sad but true. Now I tee off after the groups, by myself usually. All well and good, there are no hurt feelings that way, and I still get the round paid for by the company.

[TahoeDust]

Ha...I have more experience being the dead weight being hauled around the course by the scratch player. If carrying your team is the penalty for being a scratch, I don't think I would mind too much.

[poizster]

Don't let it bother you. My best friend works for a beer distributor and his company has played in 5 scrambles this year (mostly put on by bars where the players are all drunks) and they have won 4 of them. Rumor is they get some good player that doesn't even work for the company to play in these scrambles and they clean up. Needless to say I don't feel bad about the time share I won in the bahamas.

[Willie Malay]

Shouldn't that make you feel.....good?

[Password Is Taco]

Thanks for the replies.

Just so we're all clear - I'm not complaining at all for being the person who's shots are taken. Like the 2nd or 3rd poster said it's really fun when you can wale away on driver all day and see the putt you're about to hit 3 times before you attempt it. Even more fun to get drunk on a Wedneday, ride in a car (I always walk), and smoke cigars when I actually should be working :0)

I was trying to aim the question at what I should do about the few people who seem to take offense to it. The weird looks kind of bother me - I've been with the company for 3 years, it's a great company and I don't want to make any enemies because it's a place I could see myself staying for a while.

They have talked about a shot quota (only take 2 drives per person per 9, ect) but it is always rejected because many guys only play once a year (for this outing) and it's a fun time that's not meant to put pressure on anyone's golf game.

I appreciate the feedback!

[MadGolfer76]

UPDATE:

I played a scramble just today and was totally irrelevant off the tee. The "A" player was a monster - 20 yards past me. The "B" player was straight - as long as me and always in the fairway. Add their handicaps together and you get mine. lol

I contributed ONE drive - drove the green on a par 4 from an advanced set of tees. Other than that, I holed a couple putts, and had a very few iron shots. I contributed maybe 8 shots in the whole round.

Guess I shouldn't have complained!

[i]"You humble now hommes."[/i]

[highergr0und]

Did you guys win?

[MelloYello]

I recently played in a tournament where the winning group birdied every hole except 5. Those other 5 were all eagles. Now, there are only 3 Par-5s on the course so they not only eagled every Par-5 but also evidently holed out twice. I'm guessing they pitched in on 2 relatively short Par-4s.

This group has won this friendly, hacker's tournament for a few years in a row. It's a charity thing and while most everyone is a hacker and each group might have one low-handicap player, this group clearly has 4 and is coming to win.

To me...repeated stuff like that is annoying not because those guys shouldn't be allowed in, but having 4 low/scratch-handicaps on a team claim victory over a 4-man team with a combined handicap of 60+ isn't really competitive in any light.

You're good at golf which puts the ball in your court when the company does a golf-specific outing. I can understand however that others might feel less positive about that. Only one team is going to benefit from your playing and so they might feel some animosity towards not only the system but you as well. That's not really fair, but that's life. My advice to you would be to send out an email at work and thank everyone for playing but bring up what has been said in these responses about other methods.

In other words, display that you are open to changing the rules so that things don't get skewed in the direction of the best golfer(s). Also, make sure those people know that it's coming from you so they understand that even though you might have done well that you don't want to necessarily want this to be a thing where your abilities separate you from everyone else.

Why are you not factoring in handicap here? In many tournaments I've seen they have net and gross scores where one reflects the actual scores posted and the other reflects handicap-adjusted scores. Maybe your outing should adjust for handicap to make things equal.

You might just also try talking to a couple people directly who are giving you weird looks if you think it's only a small number of people. You might bring them aside and say [i]'man, I like playing golf, but this was a little awkward. Maybe next year I can play with you.'[/i]

[MadGolfer76]

[quote name='highergr0und' timestamp='1345929834' post='5533963']
Did you guys win?
[/quote]

If you are asking me, then no. We shot 13 under and finished for 15th (gross). I played like poopoo.