My Turn by Tom George

A Unique Competitive Outing Format That Really Works

OK, 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 “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.

A Unique Competitive Outing Format That Really Works

We have developed great tournament lore that can only happen when the event means something. Would Sarazen’s double-eagle be famous if it happened during a weekend foursome with his buddies? Consider the iconic controversy of “The Aisenberg Stake.” An OB stake had been taken into the clubhouse to be repaired, allowing our low handicapper, Jeremy Aisenberg, to legally play a ball that was so far right he was directly in front of the driving range tees. The ruling was: No stake....No OB. Of course, he went on to par the hole. Some of our guys still speak of it with raw contempt.

And then there was, “The Great Yipster,”an A player who had a bout of the yips that was so bad it had him completely out of the round...until he chipped in from 20 yards out for birdie and the big carry-over that won the tournament. Or, “Hacker 7,” who coaxed in a five foot bender for a seven that won the big carry-over as his fellow D’s all found ways to stumble to an eight.

Every year, the F&B is tightly contested. Only one year in 20 produced a blow-out win. Usually, the winning team wins by just a handful of skins, leaving every near-miss-losing player, A-B-C- or D, remembering that one putt that might have made the difference.

A golf event becomes legendary not just when your excited about it, not just when you find yourself preparing for it, but when you’re you find yourself a little bit nervous about it. That’s when you know its got meaning.

This August, our competitors we will descend on Penn National Golf Club & Inn, a 36-hole golf resort 20 miles east of Gettysburg, PA. Penn National has been the home of the F&B for 20 years. It is a perfect setting for a real tournament with two Golf-Digest award winning courses and a wonderful inn with 16 person bungalows that suit us perfectly.

We hope our unique format sparks some interest.

Tom George is a sports marketing industry veteran. Now working as an independent, Tom was a founding member of the sports marketing giant, Octagon, where he led their athlete marketing efforts. He was the lead marketer for athletes as varied as Anna Kournikova, Emmitt Smith, Chris Paul and Billiards legend, Jeanette Lee. His resume includes stints as VP Sports Marketing at Scientific Games and Athletic Director at Division I, American University.

Self-dubbed, “The Commish,” Tom is a co-founder of the F&B and its commissioner since 2000. He guards the competitive integrity of the event like it is his first-born child. He has done such a good job running the tournament’s field that he succeeded in making himself the worst golfer in the event.

Tom can be reached at 703-628-1456

Tom.george218@gmail.com

LinkedIn: Tom George Sports & Literary

¯Every real tournament needs a logo and a yearly theme. This is the F&B’s 20th anniversary at Penn National so, naturally, it is “The Penn Twenty”. The scraggily competitors from the 2021 F&B just before teeing off for Sunday’s rounds of singles separated into their A, B, C & D groups respectively.