MY TURN
by Tom George • F&B Classic, Commissioner
A Unique Competitive Outing
O
K, we were whining. My brother and I, both in our forties, were returning from coaching and watching our daughters compete in a softball tournament and we were bemoaning the loss of true competitive sport in our own lives. We had become vicarious watchers and did not get to feel the pressure, and the satisfaction, of truly competing. We were both avid golfers and weekend warriors, but who can really get the competitive juices flowing playing with the same foursome every Sunday? Playing in charity scrambles was worse. You played a scramble round, shot 58 as a team and still lost to the sandbagging, pencilsharpening foursome with a miraculous 50. Never did we get that emotional edge one feels when one is really trying hard to.... win when it meant something to win. It was on that drive home that we started to develop a golf event format to accomplish the core objective of reinserting meaningful competition back into our sporting lives. Make no mistake, we were not trying to put together an outing. We were endeavoring to put together a true tournament with everything that implies... winners and losers....prize money...trash talking.... tournament lore, bragging rights and most importantly, that incredible tension that precedes either glorious accomplishment or ignominious failure. We succeeded. This summer, on the traditional first weekend of August, we will host our 22nd consecutive event and yes, we survived and endured through every year of Covid. We can easily claim that our competitive objectives have been realized. The event, known as the F&B Classic, is a real tournament. (Note: F&B does not stand for food & beverage. The tournament moniker is an inside story that stands for Flounder & Bass, the derivation of which is not germane to this conversation. The only relevant thing to know is that Hutch is Flounder.) Clearly, the unique format we developed has fueled the friendly, sometimes hilarious, but always super-charged competitive atmosphere that keeps our players coming back year after year and drives our waiting list. We started divining this format with three objectives: 1) Make every stroke count. Provide the motivation for every competitor to grind out every shot. Curling that five-footer in for eight means something because it was not a nine. 2) Find a way for players of widely disparate skill levels to compete evenly and meaningfully. Our format allows for our low-handicapper’s two to compete evenly with my 21. Both low handicapper and hacker can make compelling contributions toward winning. 3) Keep the math off the course. Yes, we utilize handicaps to balance the field and in calculations following play. But on the course, every player is equal....a four is always a four...it is never “five net four,” Here is what we did. It is a format that has stood the tests of time and circumstance, with only minor tweaks, over our 22 years. We created a 16-man field divided into four, four-man teams. The team concept helps drive the competition as you are not just playing for yourself but also for your teammates. Each team is comprised of an
8 Golf Vacations • August 2022
“A” player, the low handicapper, plus a “B”, “C” and “D” player. The slots break down mostly by each player’s handicap level. We try to balance the teams as evenly as possible to heighten the competition and lessen the impact of any single handicap on the round-by-round results. We play our event over three rounds with each round having dual competitions in both total team skins and team low net strokes. Round One: Two-man Teams C’s & D’s vs C’s & D’s A’s & B’s vs A’s & B’s Round Two: Captains Choice Two-Man Teams Note: The A pairings always play against the other team’s A pairings Round Three: Mano a Mano a Mano a Mano The A’s play a foursome vs the other A’s---B’s play the other B’s, etc. We add a little spice by overlaying an auction-bid, low net Calcutta for all four of the Sunday foursomes. Obviously, the largest payouts, funded by the entry fees, is for the overall weekend results in total team skins and in total team low net. We have deemed that the overall team skins winner is the winner of the F&B. Having payouts over each round helps keep everyone competitive. Plus, by math, there are just as many skins available in the third-round singles play as there are cumulatively in the two doubles rounds. This helps keep every team in the hunt going into the final day. There are a couple of key rules that helps drive the competitive fire. First, all skins are carried-over if a hole is halved. If there are any skins left on the course after 18, they are equally divided amongst the competitors. This creates the awesome specter of the 7 or 8 or 9 hole carry-over that could easily decide the event. With each halved hole, the drama and tension builds. It also allows for any player, from scratch to hacker, to make (or miss!) the big shot, the key putt that means the difference between winning and losing. We also have a strict “No Gimme” policy. If it is such an easy putt, then just knock it in. The No Gimme policy is extremely equitable but also adds greatly to the tension. Many players go all year putting aggressively for birdies with the 2-3 foot come-backer guaranteed. The putting strokes tighten when a player must finish those two-three footers. Often, a new entrant with a low handicap balloons his score with a handful of 3-putt bogeys. How do we know that we have succeeded in building a successful, highly competitive event? Mostly, you can feel it. We have had new entrants beg off in subsequent years because the play was so stressful for them. Honest. Others consider it the highlight of their summer. Our players hone their games to peak the first weekend in August. You can hear cries of anguish reverberating over the golf course followed sometimes by the audible whoop-whoop-whoop of a well- thrown club. I have seen good golfers standing over a fourfooter to halve a big carry-over, leave their putt two feet short. It can get pretty emotional though, to our credit, no one has ever come to blows.
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