At 08:04 PM 8/7/2007, TOM FLANAGAN wrote:
Net.
In that case, I don't have a position on what is the right way. Yours
sounds as reasonable as any. My comments had to do with a tournament
where the handicap only figures into the team selection, and you play
gross from there. (I think Tim's experience lends support to my theory.)
When we have say, 16 guys show up, our pro enters the
names in the computer and gets a fairly balanced
readout. The only problems that arise is when the all
too often "I hate playing with Joe" crops up.
Now we're getting a bit into the "Social Golfer Problem". I'm not
kidding; it's a well-known mathematical problem (specifically
combinatorics). You can Google it; you'll find a bunch of references.
I first became aware of this problem because we needed to solve a
similar problem for the RSG events that I attend regularly. (For more
on these events, see http://users.zoominternet.net/~tutelman/) We
typically have something like five rounds, and the goal is that every
golfer should have a chance to play in a foursome with every other
golfer. (Except of course, for the guy who "hates playing with Joe".
That's not me; I actually like playing with Joe. Oh, you mean THAT
Joe.) Seriously, most of us like one another, and only meet a few
times a year. We may have anything from six (this year's RSG-Hershey)
to over 20 (last year's RSG-Ohio) golfers.
The Social Golfer Problem can be stated, "Given G golfers and R
rounds, can the foursomes be arranged so that no golfer plays more
than once with any other golfer?" This is close to the problem we are
trying to solve, which is, "Given G golfers and R rounds, can the
foursomes be arranged so that every golfer plays with every other
golfer at least once?"
Since the criterion is more precisely stated than "fairness" or
"equitability", this is as much a math problem as a golf problem. And
it has been solved.
Cheers!
DaveT
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