ladies league

Question
QUESTION: I have been trying,(and so has my husband),to figure out a 8 week schedule with 22 teams playing. Can you help? This is so confusing while looking like it should be so simple.

ANSWER: Dear Debby,

I need a little more information in order to help you. Do you want this league to serve as a mixer (so each week people are paired with people they haven't played with before)?

Are the women competing individually each week or does your league like to have more team competitions?  Either way will work and you can award points for participation as well as points based on the competition each week.

If you can tell me more, I can be more helpful.  You might write back and mark the correspondence as "private".

Best regards,

Paul Dolman
PGA Golf Professional

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: WE only have time to play 8 league games.  Not everybody will get a chance to play each team.  Each of the 8 weeks a team will play a different team.  I don't know how to decide who plays who each of the 8 weeks.  We only have teams of 2. no individual play.  Thanks

ANSWER: Dear Debby,

Since you have an odd number of teams for the number of weeks you have to play...my suggestion isn't going to be the perfect solution but I think it might work for you.

Get the handicaps from all 22 person teams.  Divide your field of players into 3 flights according to handicap.  Two flights will have seven teams and one flight will have eight teams.  You might name the flights after famous women golfers or any other name that seems appropriate for your group.

The two flights with seven teams will play for six weeks of "regular season" rotating through the other teams in that flight.  At the end of six weeks you will take your top four teams (in point accumulation) in each of those flights and have a playoff for the championship of that flight.  The winners in week seven will play each other in week eight for the flight championship.

When you get to the playoff weeks I would start over from zero on the points so all teams making the playoff have an equal chance to win the championship in their flight.  To reward the top team from the regular season, you can have them play the fourth place team.  Of course, number two would play against number three.

In the flight with eight teams you will also do a round robin, but for seven weeks.  The top two teams will play for the championship of that flight during week eight.

There are several ways to score the matches each week.  You can simply award the winning team one point for winning their match (and a half point for a tie); or, award one point for each hole won and a half point for a hole that is halved.  In this second method of scoring, all matches will go the full distance (9 or 18 holes depending on how many holes your league is playing).  In the first method, a match is won when there are less holes remaining to be played than the number of holes one is down in the match.

If you accumulate the number of holes won over the course of your league's season, I think it might be more interesting for your group and as I said, everyone will get to play all the holes each week.

Give all players their full handicaps where their strokes fall on the scorecard.  Play one best ball of the two partners.

Next year, you might consider closing the league after the first 21 teams sign up so you'll have the same playing rotation in all three flights.  Or, have three 8 team flights (24 teams), running your "regular season" over 7 weeks and then one week for the final playoff for championship.

I hope my suggestion works for you.  Let me know if you want to "tweak" it.  And of course, you are under no obligation to accept any of it.

Good luck with your league!

Best wishes,

Paul Dolman



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: There are no flights.  I just need to schedule 8 games so that nobody plays the same team twice. It is 8 games over 8 weeks with 22 teams.

Answer
Dear Debby,

Okay.  If you do not wish to form flights, and your only other factor is that no team plays any other team more than once, it's simple.  I've created a spreadsheet below.  Your teams are represented by numbers and the eight weeks of your season are represented by the letters "A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H".  As you can see, no team plays another team twice.

This grid works but when I got ready to SEND it to you this email program wouldn't maintain the spacing so it doesn't look right.  If you have excel or just a piece of graph paper and you label the top with teams 12 through 22 and the left side with teams 1 through 11, you'll see that it works perfectly.

  12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22

1   A   B    C    D    E    F    G    H

2       A    B    C    D    E    F    G    H

3          A    B    C    D    E    F    G    H

4          A    B    C    D    E    F    G    H

5  H          A    B    C    D    E    F    G

6  G   H          A    B    C    D    E    F

7  F   G    H          A    B    C    D    E

8  E   F    G    H          A    B    C    D

9  D   E    F    G    H          A    B    C

10 C   D    E    F    G    H          A    B

11 B   C    D    E    F    G    H          A

In week one (A) team 1 plays team 12; team 2 plays team 13...etc.  Each match up for each week is predetermined by this grid.  

Let me know if this serves your purposes or if you have any additional questions.

Best wishes,

Paul Dolman