The much anticipated Division 3 vs. Division 5 2-person scramble was played July 6, 2017 at Columbia Golf Club. Mark Christian, Fred Horner and Bob Zaruba coordinated a fun event, including a terrific meal afterwards. Pitchers of beer flowed freely thanks to Ron Pierson’s hole-in-one on #16.
By the most narrow margin, Division 5 managed to squeak by Division 3 in the Division competition. Strong finishes by Div 5 “B” flight golfers provided the difference in an extremely close match, where a change in 3 or 4 strokes from the 88 golfers could have changed the outcome of the match. Results of the Division competition and the 2-person scramble competition, prize money and closest-to-pin winners, are shown in the pdf spreadsheet attached to this post.
A short note about the Div vs. Div scoring: Essentially, all scramble teams are ranked by their net score. The team the finishes first, gets a 1, the team finishing second gets a 2, etc. until at least 10 teams from each Division has been given their overall ranking. These numbers are then added for each Division and the LOWEST total wins. This scoring is how cross-county teams compete. It works with any number of competitors and teams. One result of this scoring is that the 20th place finishing team is just as important in winning overall as the first place finishing team – resulting in real team competition, not just reliance on the top finishers. For our Div 3 vs. Div 5 competition, we decided arbitrarily to just score the top 10 teams from each Division. Div 5 won with a 102 total to Division 3’s 107 total. If we had determined to score the top 15 teams from each Division, Div 3 would have won, 221 to 254. In this “cross-country” scoring, the more 2-person scramble teams that you have, the greater chance you have at winning. Perhaps next year, we will have more than 44 scramble teams.