I’ve been wanting to do Pingolf at some point, and probably should have done it for my last monthly tournament in 2015 before the new rules went into effect.
I normally do a tournament lasting 2-3 hours, with 10ish people (max has been 16, min has been 8) on 10 machines. Players are intermediate level.
Any suggestions for how to do a 9 hole tournament that isn’t going to require a ton of waiting (so that there can be a direct play component at the end)? My first thought was to do twosomes and/or threesomes (which will be faster than foursomes), and to start the best players last.
I guess with that few players, we would only need the top 2 to make the finals, so most people would know as soon as they finish (or the group behind them finishes) if they need to wait around.
Even with a max of 16 people, you should be able to organize something without a lot of waiting around. For example, with 16 players you could divide up into four 3 player groups and two 2 player groups. So long as you have 9 games to use, the waiting for a game to open up should be nil. And one of the good things about pingolf is that you can adjust goals to control game time somewhat.
In our pingolf league, groups were randomly assigned and then we did a shotgun start—group 1 started on hole 1, group 2 on hole 2 and so on. When the first hole was finished, a group simply found an open hole to play. We always had at least one more game than we had groups and there was only one occasion I can recall where there was more than one group waiting to play a hole and that was due to a game malfunction. If you force players to play the course in order, you’ll undoubtedly slow down the event and have a lot of backups.
As for finals, you could do another 3 holes of pingolf with 2 to 4 players but allow game/position choice for each of the three games to the highest seed. This is how we’re going to run our league for spring. I’d rather not use that format but it’s either that or no IFPA points.
Yeah, maybe I don’t need to worry too much. I hadn’t thought of the shotgun start. All of the pingolf tournaments I’ve played in have been 40+ people, play holes in order. But with 12 or so players, everyone should be done around the same time if I have 9 machines and the holes don’t have to be played in order, even in foursomes.
Did this last night, and the players loved it. 9 machines on 5 ball, each with a multiball related goal. 11 players…split into two foursomes and a threesome. It was taking a little to long, so halfway through I had people split up a little more to make it go faster. Took 2 hours for the 9 holes, and then 4 top four made the finals. Each player picked a machine and set the goal, and then we played all four, doing pingolf scoring.
Hey @pinwizj, am I right that this constitutes 17 meaningful games played?
9 holes of indirect pingolf + 4 games of direct pingolf * 2 (for the 2x multiplier for 4 player games?)
@pinwizj: So for PinGolf, finals can still be PinGolf scoring?
If so, to qualify as “direct” PinGolf play if more than 4 players in finals, then it has to be something like 2 players advance to next finals round out of each PinGolf foursome? (vs 8 finalist playing in two foursomes where everyone’s pingolf scores are compared across groups)
I believe in the past, the explanation for allowing the non-open IFPA SCS/Nationals/Worlds events to be awarded WPPR points was that every WPPR-rated event during the year was “qualifying” for those IFPA tournaments.
I’m also under the impression that the 2016 WPPR rules require that 10-50% percent of participants who attempt qualification for a tournament must advance to the playoff rounds for a tournament to be eligible for WPPR points.
Given all this, are the IFPA tournaments eligible for WPPR points under the 2016 rules? With only 16 SCS finalists in each state, that’s almost certainly less than 10% of attempted qualifiers in each state; similarly, at most 1/16 (6%) of SCS participants advance to IFPA Nationals; etc.
But he does have a point. While the limit of top 16 can make a good case for “probably less than 160 serious participants” in most states for the 10% rule, the “winner only goes to Nationals” can’t make such a case. A good case could be made for “two finalists go to the Nationals” being needed to fit the rule. To avoid the issue of “what if the runner-up in state X wins the National title,” the first round at the Nationals would then be the finals for each state.
The obvious problem with all of this is that not all state finalists might be willing or able to go to a single location for the Nationals.
Hey, look at it this way, the shipping costs for the state trophies would be less; give them all out at the same time in one location. It would also give more “clout” to the Nationals as an event, having all of those state titles determined there together.
Whatever, I’m Bob Matthews, not running for office, and I approve Joe’s heckle>.
