Recently, several golf clubs have asked me two questions: Q1. Does the Knuth Tournament Point System work for flighted team events when it was designed to work for events of 50 or more players? It seems that points can build up too fast in this case., and Q2. What should be done about the team partner that is on the winning team, but does not seem to be the dominant player?

ANSWER 1:

The Point System works especially well for flighted team events. My own club assigns points to the individuals in the top five teams in each flight and it works quite well. First off, sixteen teams is enough teams to identify exceptional teams. However, the problem is that flights usually contain less than 50 players. As a result, Knuth Tournament Points can add up faster. To accommodate such events, I have designed a refined table below which adds a second dimension to the assignment of points and then a third dimension for the reduction of handicaps for tournament play.

ANSWER 2:

Secondly, I am a firm believer that all team members should be assigned tournament points and get reduced (As one club calls it, getting "KNUTH\\'d"). Any member of a winning team is sharing in the winning experience, and the Point System is designed to spread the "wealth" (winning) around to other teams over time. Finally, if a clever sandbagger is hiding his individual scores inside of the team scores, he and his partner still should be assigned points. That is a beauty of the system--The scores don\\'t matter. The only thing that matters is the finishing position. If there is an innocent partner who also gets the points, nothing happens to his handicap until he has two or more high finishes. Remember, to accumulate seven points, one must either have a win and a fourth, or a second and a third--Two very strong finishes. It is in keeping with the USGA\\'s longtime philosophy that everyone can have one great round--you just can\\'t have two great rounds without consequences. I don\\'t think that an "innocent" partner is so innocent if he repeatedly teams with a bagger who gives him a high finish. Let someone else win for a while.

EXPANDED TABLE

I ran a simulation program and expanded on the Knuth Tournament Point system that previously had been based on tournaments or flights that had to have a minimum of 50 players.

The new table is expanded to have columns for determining point distributions and is designed especially for clubs that flight their tournaments. The second table is useful for clubs that conduct many flighted events.

Then, depending on the number of events entered, the reduction should vary:

Comments from golf clubs are requested.