^^^
I have never heard of the idea of a skins league, but I really like that. How do you end up making the cards? I think that it would make sense that the first week would be random and then each week after the cards would be arranged by your standings. This way I don't think anyone could really pull ahead as everyone should be competing against people around the same standings.
As a league we only meet as a full league once a month. We also play a different course every month, that way we see a variety of holes throughout the season. No one person can have home-course advantage. This is when we play for skins in groups of four. The winner of each group gets 4 points, 3 points for second, 2 points for third, and 1 for showing up. There are no ties for first place, but you can tie all other places. If we had a three way tie for second, then all those players would get 3 points. We want to reward as many points as possible because ties happen all the time when you are playing skins.
What we do between league events is what really drives the standings. Each player is assigned three other players within the league in which they must have a head to head match. They can play anywhere and any time that is convenient for those two, just as long as their results are recorded before the next league event. You use traditional scoring here since it is only two players, but in the end you get 3 points if you win, 2 points for the loser for at least showing up. Scoring differential does not matter; just winners and losers.
In a best case scenario versus worst, if I won all three of my matches that month, I would be awarded 9 points. If I turn around and win my group at the event, I will receive 4 more points for a total of 13 for the month. If another player loses all his or her matches for the month and then finishes last in their group, they will receive 4 points for the month; so at least they are still getting something for being an active participant.
If another player who is not assigned to play me this month and is ranked low enough not to be in my group at the event wins all of his or her matches and then wins his or her group at the event, they would have earned 13 points as well. Likely, since they were not in my group, they shot considerably worse than I did; they just played better than their competition. This is as close as we can get to a handicap system without really having handicaps. Eventually those who were lowly ranked because of attendance issues or sandbagging will find their way up to the higher groups. As for assigned matches, they are not based upon rankings or ability, but are randomly assigned at the beginning of the season.
There is usually not a lot of movement in the top three once they have established themselves in the second month. Where we see movement is in those people who are either at the bottom of one group or the top of the group underneath; such as 4th place and 5th place or 8th and 9th or so on and so on. If a 4th ranked player comes in last in his or her group, they will have only received 1 point at the event. If the 5th place person wins his or her group (a group made up of 5th to 8th place people), he or she would have earned 4 points. That is usually enough to swap those two spots in the rankings because points are a premium.
Finally, after all those matches (usually 18 for the year) and league events, the standings are only used to determine which group you are in during the Year-End event. We have a rule that those ranked 1st through 3rd have a secure spot in the top group and those ranked 4th through 8th will playoff (usually only 4 holes so the day does not get too long) for the final spot in this lead group. Thus, if you are in the top 8 going into the final day, you have a chance to walk away as the champion even if there was a huge point differential between 1st and 8th starting the day. This is the incentive to play well, or at least well enough, and makes sure that no one, no matter how good they are, are guaranteed anything. I could easily have a bad day during that championship round. As I mentioned earlier, the others played well enough where I NEEDED to make a putt on the 18th hole to secure a win. The player I had to beat made an unbelievable recover shot from deep in the woods to land underneath the basket that was in the open field. I mean his back was facing the basket, he was stretch to the limit, and he still made the perfect 200 foot approach shot. I missed that putt and had to go to sudden death. I almost lost because of poor putting on my part and that he made enough good shots to have enough skins to push me at the end. His miracle shot was almost enough to win the event. It does not even matter that by strokes if we had been counting he would have been 6 or more behind at the time.
