Managing League Playoffs

We're getting to that time of year where golf leagues start to think of playoffs.   What's the best format to play, and what do most leagues do?  It's really up to you, but here are some ideas:

First and Second Half Winners

In leagues who break their season into first and second halves, they usually have the winners of each half have a final match to determine overall champion.  In my leagues, I have everybody else play a 2-person handicapped scramble where everything throws in a few bucks.  The USGA has recommendations on how to handicap 2 and 4-person scrambles which you can read about in this article.

Multi-Round Playoffs

An alternative if you play 2 halves, or if you play a a single segment is to take the top 4 players or teams, and have them play in a 2-round elimination match.  For those who play in a single segment, you'd take the top 4 teams, while those who play in 2 halves would take the top two from each half.  If there's a team who makes the top 2 in each half, you might give them a "bye" in the first round (also, check those handicap settings... this is REALLY hard to do!).

More than 4 Teams...

If you want to do a large playoff bracket, check out PrintYourBrackets.com. They've already created seeded brackets so that you don't have to figure out how to make it, along with a double-elimination bracket system.

Single Round-More Than 2 Teams

One final idea is to play a stroke play low Net score winner take all for the final round. This would enable you to have more than 2 teams or players while only have one round of playoffs

How to Set it Up

• You first need to have a blank round or rounds for each of your playoff rounds. You can do that by going to Scheduling, "Add, Delete, or Move Rounds". See this video for help on that screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlgtCTV-m4A
• You will set your matches manually by going to Scheduling and choosing "Edit Schedule For a Single Round".  From there you can choose which course, side and teams or players are playing. It's recommended that you set that rounds as a "Position Round" so that players know that is a playoff round.
• Enter your scores as you normally would after play is done.