What Handicap Allowance to use in a Texas Scramble?

I've been tasked with organising and running a 10 week long Texas Scramble Medal event at my club, to try and encourage a few more people to come out and play on a Saturday Afternoon / Evening in the summer.

The format is pretty simple, teams of 3 compete over 9 holes in medal format, with scores each week going into an order of merit. However at the moment no one can quite agree on the best way to allocate handicap allowance.

We had a test run last night and it was decided the allowance would be to combine the 3 players handicaps, calculate 10% of that value and that was the number of shots they receive at the end of the round. So a team of a 18hcp, 26hcp and 28hcp had a total Hcp of 72 so they received 7.2 shots seemed pretty straight forward.

However today someone is complaining that as its a 9 hole event handicaps should be halved and then the 10% calculated. That would have meant the team above only receiving 3.6 shots off their round at the end. That seems awfully harsh to me as that figure is significantly lower then each players respective 9 hole handicap. Especially when a team of 5hcp golfers would receive 1 shot, its not exactly a balanced way of doing it and favours the low handicap golfers and one thing I don't want is a competition thats biased.

Does anyone have any other suggestions for how to work out the handicap allowance?

As you well know, Chris, any handicap introduced into golf is a lottery. Texas scramble teams are usually made up of 1 single figure, one mid handicap and one high handicap then it does not really matter that much what handicap system you adopt as it will be fair for all teams.

At our club we do it this way but make sure all the handicaps come out the same in total and all play level. Some teams will be stronger of course but knowing this tends to focus the minds.

Chris,

Most forms of Scramble, of which Texas is one, are played with teams of 2 or 4.

If your format is all Drive, pick best, all play from that point, pick best, all play from there until a score is made. For this "Ambrose" game add all three Hcp's and divide by 6 then half that for 9 holes. In you example they would recieve 6 not 7.2.

Hope this helps,

TheLyth

What happens then Christopher?

I have not come across any type of game like this.

TheLyth

Thanks Christopher,

I would think that because you take away two further chances of a good location for the 2nd shots, you need to add a little to the Hcp allowence. I think with this format, its all up to you. You could even go with half the lowest Hcp in the group.

Good luck on this one.

TheLyth