Dave,
Absolutely great questions.
1. The competitions are individual foursome events.
2. A foursome's 2 best net scores per hole. (2 * 18) = Total Team Strokes
3. Net scores, handicaps are monitored and are trusted (but sand baggers
will exist to some small degree).
4. "Fair" was probably the incorrect term. Equitable might be better.
Dean Knuth's web site has an article on picking a partner
http://www.popeofslope.com/guidelines/picking.html
There are certain handicap combinations that have an advantage /
disadvantage. I would want to avoid those combinations if possible.
Here is an excerpt from the Knuth article:
Dr. Scheid has also researched four-man teams, a grouping most often
found in a pro-amateur competition. In many tournaments, the teams
consist of an A player (handicap of 3 to 7), B (8-12), C (13-17) and D
(18-22), making each team relatively equal in strength. but when teams
are allowed to put together their own combinations, it's possible to
gain an advantage by studying Dr. Scheid's findings. They show that a
team composed entirely of A players would have an edge on a team of C
players, but would not fare as well as a team of B players. According to
Dr. Scheid, the best combination would be a team whose composition is
BBDD. Next, a full stroke behind in potential, would be a team of AACC,
closely followed by AABB and AADD. This research is not to be dismissed
lightly, based as it is on the study of thousands of tournament scores.
Of course our fields won't have an equal distribtion of A, B, C, & D
players.
/Ed
Dave Tutelman wrote:
Sorry to disappoint, Ed! I guess I'm not a smart guy, because I don't
understand the question. Actually, I don't think I know what a fair
foursome is. For instance, first I would want to know:
(1) Does a club win, or does an individual win?
(2) What game is being played? Individual stroke play? Four ball
better ball? Something else?
(3) Does the game include handicap, or is it gross? Either way, are
the handicaps known and trusted?
(4) Could you give some examples of an UNFAIR foursome, so I know
what the metric of fairness is?
Basically I'm saying that you are asking for a precise, algorithmic
solution to a problem that is far from precisely stated. ("Fair" is
hardly a precise measurement.)
Thanks,
DaveT
At 04:42 PM 8/6/2007, Ed Reeder wrote:
>I'm hoping that one of you smart guys can help me out.
>
> From time to time I participate in tournaments with other clubs and we
>create foursomes which usually consist of two players from one club and
>two players from the other club. At times the number of players on each
>side may be different, so instead of 2 from each side, it could be 3 and
>1, or even 4 and 0.
>
>Right now we do this by hand, with no real guidance on how to fairly
>allocate the players.
>
>I'd like to have a way to automatically and fairly create foursomes.
>Though we typically have only two clubs to draw from, I could see that
>three or four could be a possibility.
>
>I've got a few questions:
>1. Is there a formula for fairly creating the foursomes?
>2. Is there a way to automate this in Excel, with the ability to draw
>players from 1 to 4 "pools" of players?
>3. Is there a cheap software package that does this?
>
>Thx,
>
>/Ed
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