bfghd:Wow, what a fun round! I played with Macduff10, and I had a good time. I ended up even par, but clearly left 6 shots out there. 2 over on the back 9 :-( Thank you so much for putting on the tourney again! I had a blast, even if my scores weren't great, lol. Hope to play again when the next addition rolls around!
Macduff10: Nice round with Matt, good fun. You might notice he reversed his birdie to bogey ratio on the front & back nines. I thought for a while there that Hans was in deep do do, but alas... I got all the screen shots Matt, not to worry. And here they are. I will say nothing about my own round, other than I stink & will always stink. Regardless, it was a super fun tournament. Thanks Corwyn & CD et al. for putting it on & applying masterful governance over same.
Nice shooting Matt: no shame in being +2 on the back 9 — it can be very hard! Thank you both for kicking off the final round at RSG, and thank you too for your kind words!
You're now veterans of this tourney, having been in both TIO 1 & 2. Congratulations for toughing-it-out!
This seems like a good moment to ask about the future as well... I'm not going to rush into organizing another one of these right away (it's a lot of work!), but nonetheless I've been wondering what might be most interesting to do next with this format. Here are a couple of ideas, with a possible goal of doing one of them in April or May, before summer comes along:
1. A Better Ball Pairs Tourney with Starters and Unevens
We did this with a few participants in our cc, and it was a lot of fun. It took away a lot of the pressure to know that you had a partner covering your back, and introduced some fun strategy where one player could be aggressive while the other tried to secure par. Also, we set it up where you could have as many attempts as you and your partner's schedule allowed. In addition, sharing your shot-making info with your partner was actively encouraged, calling out in the chat what club you're using etc, and helping each other make the best score possible. We'd do it just in twosomes, with each pair posting their score in the thread. The biggest difficulty I can foresee is how to pair people up fairly... everyone would want to be with Hans!
2. A Ryder Cup with Starters and Unevens
This might be ambitious! (Hans obviously knows a lot about what it takes to organize a Ryder Cup, so he can chime in on how crazy this is!) Nonetheless, I thought it would be amazing to tackle the new course this year, Merion, with this format. I think it would need to be on a smaller-scale than Hans' major WGT Ryder Cup, perhaps just teams of 6 or 8, with any foursomes games restricted to 9 holes for practicality. And I would anticipate that matches would end up being determined more by schedule than random pairing (in Hans' tourney, the players were such high-level that they were pretty much online all the time anyway, so scheduling was less of a problem).
One reason I think this would be a great format for Ryder Cup play is that all scores on a hole are possible with uneven starters, from occasional birdie to double-bogey and worse, making matchplay very interesting. In flat-lie games with fancy clubs, as in the WGT Ryder Cup, holes tended to be determined by a rare instance of a super-player not making birdie (fascinating to watch, but not as dramatic).
Anyway, those are a couple of ideas thrown out. I'd love to hear reactions, and whether or not you'd want to be a part of future tourneys like this.
Thanks, Corwyn