Hello all. I'm thinking of running a match play tournament and was wondering if people had any suggestions or comments about trying to do this sort of thing. It would be great to hear from anyone with past experience running this sort of tournament. Thank you for your time .
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Match play
- Thread starter mwierda
- Start date
smarkquart
* Ace Member *
I think it could be an interesting concept if done right. Some things to consider:
Single elimination? Double elimination? Round Robin? Most wins? Play-off style?
Players playing for themselves? Players playing for a team?
Single day? Mulitple day? How many holes per match? How many courses for the whole tournament?
My on-the-spot, based only what I would want to do suggestion would be:
2 Days, everyone makes it to Day Two. There are only two divisions; Pro and Amateur, push for all normal advanced players to play "Pro".
Day One - 9 Holes per match. Stroke/ throw rules. 2 points for a win, 1 for a tie. Your differential is your tie breaker (if you win by 3 throws, that is +3; if you lose by 5 throws, that is -5). Minimum 4 matches.
Day Two - Create a tournament bracket ala March Madness. Each match is 9 holes but may not end in a tie (use sudden death overtime, first one to win a hole wins). Encourage those who get knocked out to caddy, spot, and or take pictures of the remaining rounds. Have a 3rd and 4th place match for those two who lost in the Final Four.
Keeping things moving is key. If possible, use a course where most holes are around 200-300 feet. This should still offer a scoring spread, but not make horribly long matches. A match should not take more than 45 minutes. If it is not too much of a logistical nightmare, try to use an 18 holes course. Designate certain holes for the Ams and others for the Pros. Quite a jam could occur if you are letting only two-somes got out on each hole. Letting two matches go out together may take away from the intensity of playing against a single opponent, but could speed things up.
Finally, some really awesome and unique prize is in order for the two divisional winners.
Single elimination? Double elimination? Round Robin? Most wins? Play-off style?
Players playing for themselves? Players playing for a team?
Single day? Mulitple day? How many holes per match? How many courses for the whole tournament?
My on-the-spot, based only what I would want to do suggestion would be:
2 Days, everyone makes it to Day Two. There are only two divisions; Pro and Amateur, push for all normal advanced players to play "Pro".
Day One - 9 Holes per match. Stroke/ throw rules. 2 points for a win, 1 for a tie. Your differential is your tie breaker (if you win by 3 throws, that is +3; if you lose by 5 throws, that is -5). Minimum 4 matches.
Day Two - Create a tournament bracket ala March Madness. Each match is 9 holes but may not end in a tie (use sudden death overtime, first one to win a hole wins). Encourage those who get knocked out to caddy, spot, and or take pictures of the remaining rounds. Have a 3rd and 4th place match for those two who lost in the Final Four.
Keeping things moving is key. If possible, use a course where most holes are around 200-300 feet. This should still offer a scoring spread, but not make horribly long matches. A match should not take more than 45 minutes. If it is not too much of a logistical nightmare, try to use an 18 holes course. Designate certain holes for the Ams and others for the Pros. Quite a jam could occur if you are letting only two-somes got out on each hole. Letting two matches go out together may take away from the intensity of playing against a single opponent, but could speed things up.
Finally, some really awesome and unique prize is in order for the two divisional winners.
My brother and I ran one successfully for years, curtailed only because of our schedules and other obligations. I'm subject to going on and on and on about match play, but I'll try to restrain myself to a general description of how we did it. There may be others, perhaps even better, ways.
Ours was a 1-day event with 2 divisions, Pro and Am, held on a fun but fairly short course (Earlewood). It was a single elimination bracket (like NCAA March Madness; in fact, ours was in March and also named March Madness. Clever?).
It was 18 holes for the first round, then 9-hole matches each subsequent round. 9 hole matches, with elimination on the line, are intense! 32 players per division, so that's 5 rounds.
During the 3rd & 4th rounds, everyone who was eliminated in rounds 1 & 2, which is 75% of the players, were automatically entered in a random draw doubles, stroke play, that was running simultaneously. Kind of an NIT. This was a key feature for us, because
* It guaranteed everyone at least 36 holes of play---the first 18-hold round, plus doubles, so they didn't worry about coming and getting eliminated in the first round.
* It meant everyone came off about the time the 9-hole championship round started, so they could be a gallery if they wished.
There are a lot of complicating logistics to match play that we worked out over the years. Things you never deal with in stroke play, like the absolute necessity of having an even number of players.
I love match play and applaud anyone who'll run some events. We need more!
Ours was a 1-day event with 2 divisions, Pro and Am, held on a fun but fairly short course (Earlewood). It was a single elimination bracket (like NCAA March Madness; in fact, ours was in March and also named March Madness. Clever?).
It was 18 holes for the first round, then 9-hole matches each subsequent round. 9 hole matches, with elimination on the line, are intense! 32 players per division, so that's 5 rounds.
During the 3rd & 4th rounds, everyone who was eliminated in rounds 1 & 2, which is 75% of the players, were automatically entered in a random draw doubles, stroke play, that was running simultaneously. Kind of an NIT. This was a key feature for us, because
* It guaranteed everyone at least 36 holes of play---the first 18-hold round, plus doubles, so they didn't worry about coming and getting eliminated in the first round.
* It meant everyone came off about the time the 9-hole championship round started, so they could be a gallery if they wished.
There are a lot of complicating logistics to match play that we worked out over the years. Things you never deal with in stroke play, like the absolute necessity of having an even number of players.
I love match play and applaud anyone who'll run some events. We need more!
I ran a 16 person Match play tournament 2 years ago that went pretty well. It was not a one day event but took place over two months so that all of our area courses could be in play.
The basic info for the tourney was
-Random Draw
-For every 10 points in ratings the lower rated person got a mulligan (ex 950 vs 900 rated the 900 rated player got 5 mulligans)
-The first two rounds were single rounds with Semi's and Finals being two rounds
-Courses and tees were negotiable. White tees were the standard but if both parties wanted to play longs or short then that was all good. If a course could not be agreed on then I would just randomly pick one out as a tie breaker.
-Two weeks to finish your match
It was all pretty straight forward and went smoothly but I learned that the mulligan does not help when there is a significant distance gap between the competitors.
The basic info for the tourney was
-Random Draw
-For every 10 points in ratings the lower rated person got a mulligan (ex 950 vs 900 rated the 900 rated player got 5 mulligans)
-The first two rounds were single rounds with Semi's and Finals being two rounds
-Courses and tees were negotiable. White tees were the standard but if both parties wanted to play longs or short then that was all good. If a course could not be agreed on then I would just randomly pick one out as a tie breaker.
-Two weeks to finish your match
It was all pretty straight forward and went smoothly but I learned that the mulligan does not help when there is a significant distance gap between the competitors.
biscoe
* Ace Member *
i have run a team match play event for a number of years. at this point it is one of the most anticipated events on the east coast and has a waiting list over 10 years long to get in.
format:
12 teams of 9 players divided into 2 divisions (it's on a pasture so divisions are beef and dairy).
teams are 4 open, 2 masters, 2 advanced. 1 lady.
team captains seed their teams by division.
in a match each seed from team a plays their respective seed from team b- 1 point for a win, 1/2 point for a tie. most team points wins match. matches are 12 holes.
each team plays the 5 other teams from their division. top 2 teams from each division make the playoffs- last place teams in each division play off to see who doesn't get to return the following year.
in the playoffs 1st place from beef plays 2nd place and dairy and vice versa with the 2 winners meeting for the championship. playoff matches are 9 holes.
match play is way more entertaining than stroke play imo.
format:
12 teams of 9 players divided into 2 divisions (it's on a pasture so divisions are beef and dairy).
teams are 4 open, 2 masters, 2 advanced. 1 lady.
team captains seed their teams by division.
in a match each seed from team a plays their respective seed from team b- 1 point for a win, 1/2 point for a tie. most team points wins match. matches are 12 holes.
each team plays the 5 other teams from their division. top 2 teams from each division make the playoffs- last place teams in each division play off to see who doesn't get to return the following year.
in the playoffs 1st place from beef plays 2nd place and dairy and vice versa with the 2 winners meeting for the championship. playoff matches are 9 holes.
match play is way more entertaining than stroke play imo.
This feeds into my comment. You have carefully balance "eliminating" players, but keeping them involved. If you're done playing once you lose, early eliminations will feel cheated. But you can run into the problem of if you have consolation matches to keep people playing, you might have people bail if there's nothing to play for anymore.
To be clear, entry in the Random Doubles was free but we'd set aside payouts for the top finishers, so they had something to play for.
For team play and more than one day, I love Biscoe's format of two pools and playing every other team in their pool. He's reached the point where he can be certain of a full field. Someone starting out has to plan for less-than-full fields, which complicates things. The more divisions you have, the more complicated it becomes.
I used to also run some Ryder-cup style match play events between two cities. Scoring was similar to Biscoe's. But it obviously only accommodated 2 teams.
Cgkdisc
.:Hall of Fame Member:.
I ran a Swiss style match play tournament back in the early 90s using the same procedures as chess tournaments. No players are eliminated but continue playing matches against players with the same record as they have at that point in the tournament which is usually 5 or 6 rounds. Players can still be in their conventional divisions so a player might win Advanced with a 3-2 record and a Rec player might win their division with a 1-4 record. Here's the Wiki link for the format. Seeding is a lot easier now with many more players having ratings which didn't exist when I first tried it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss-system_tournament
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss-system_tournament
Awesome, Chuck. I've never heard of this, but have been thinking along these lines for either a 2-day match play tournament, or weekly league play. That link will give me some ample reading....beats trying to figure it out, myself.
Im running one in may. Doing it this way so far;
Random draw for "seeds"
Start in flights
Im expecting ~24 people
Will start payots in rd 2, smaller vouchers
Rd 1 losers will play a losers bracket where 1 and 2 get something
Final 4 is cash payout
Will construct bracket according to how may people show up, having a play-in match if need be of 9 holes
Random draw for "seeds"
Start in flights
Im expecting ~24 people
Will start payots in rd 2, smaller vouchers
Rd 1 losers will play a losers bracket where 1 and 2 get something
Final 4 is cash payout
Will construct bracket according to how may people show up, having a play-in match if need be of 9 holes
You're contemplating a 9-hole play-in match if you have an odd number? Or did I interpret that wrong? That's a 50% chance everyone will have to wait an extra hour to start.
~24 is an interesting number. Seems like it'll lead to 3 players left standing.
~24 is an interesting number. Seems like it'll lead to 3 players left standing.
Sadjo
* Ace Member *
I like this idea...of doing a Match Play tournament. I might need to consider dropping one of my tournaments and picking up doing a match play.
The Cedar farm DG Club runs a one day Maryland Match Play event every summer (for the common folk not good enough to get invited to VTI). There's a 4600 point team ratings cap (5 player teams). Last year they added the ability to go over the cap at the expense of giving up penalty strokes. There's a lot that goes into these competitions (like tiebreakers for example , can't play everything off or you'll never finish). Check out the MTM thread on the md-discgolf.com/forums/ website for details.
Easily one of the most looked forward to events on my calender.
And this:
And this:
...is truth. I've offered to off someone and still can't get the nod. Maybe I should keep work on my putting instead.
aPfaff
Double Eagle Member
I love match play, VTI bound this year after taking down steven miller in the club championship.
That would be awesome....especially if it falls on a date my cramped schedule allows me to play.
If you do, and it's singles, I'll offer a treatise of ideas and problems we worked out when we ran March Madness, which you'll of course be free to ignore.
