Tournament Handicapping

Unlike most tournaments, players here are assigned to a new 4-person scramble team each day, while also competing individually over the course of four days.

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Because of this uncommon format, we wanted to explain how handicaps are handled.

The USGA offers general recommendations for team handicaps in scrambles: 25% of Player A’s index, 20% of Player B’s, 15% of Player C’s, 10% of Player D’s. While helpful, these are only guidelines—especially for events like ours, where teams may not always be full foursomes. With nearly 70 teams competing each day, some will be threesomes due to last-minute changes.

To keep things fair for everyone, including players on randomly assigned threesomes, we apply a handicap adjustment. When a team has only three players, each rotates hitting the “fourth shot,” and we assign a composite handicap to that shot based on the trio’s indexes. This allows them to compete on equal footing with full teams.

After reviewing past results, we’ve updated our policy: instead of using 10% of each player’s index, we’ll now use 15% per player. This brings us closer to USGA guidelines and creates a more balanced field.

As always, keeping an official GHIN / WHS Handicap is critical for fairness and uniformity. Failure to keep a proper handicap only hurts our ability to ensure you get flighted properly as well as the integrity of the tournament.

We’re committed to fairness and continually fine-tune our system to ensure a great experience for all. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re happy to talk through the details.

📞 (833) 968-1924
📧 nrmgctournament@gmail.com