You’re on your way to enjoying a fantastic Golf Tournament.
Golf Tournament: Four!
Hosting a golf tournament can be a daunting task. A lot of golf tournaments are charity
tournaments, which means there is a limited budget. It requires a lot of coordination to set up,
promotion to get participants, and volunteers to execute. Let us here at Gig Salad help you plan
a successful golf tournament.
Take Care of Your Volunteers
One of the most important things you need to before setting out to organize a golf
tournament is to get a solid group of volunteers or staff to assist you with the organizing. The
next major step is finding a golf course that is willing to host the tournament and is available
on the date you wish to hold the tournament. You can save a little bit of money by holding the
tournament during the week versus on a weekend. Book the course well in advance, so that
way you can start renting any equipment, registering golfers, and organizing staff as soon as
possible.
Some other preliminary things you want to take care of is any rental equipment that you’ll
need. You’ll more than likely need a registration tent, so look up a tent rental company and get something reserved. You
won’t want your hard working volunteers stuck out in the sun! Along those same lines, you’ll
want to make sure to have plenty of chairs and tables for the registration tent. If you have staff working at particular
holes, you’ll want some sort of seating for them as well. These volunteers at the holes may be
official score keepers, helping with games, etc. An easy option is to give them a golf cart to use
for the day. That will provide shade and a seat. Also, be sure to have plenty of bottled water at
various stations for both the players and volunteers.
Team Up
With the large number of teams and players, generally you don’t play a tournament like a
normal game. First of all, the teams will go out in either staggered intervals or each team will
start on a certain hole. When using the first option, have each team start 10 minutes apart.
The second option works if you have less than 18 teams; designate which hole each time is
supposed to start at. This option saves you a little more time than starting teams at various time
intervals because everyone will start at the same time.
There is another time saving aspect you’ll need to consider when organizing the tournament
and that is the play format: scramble, best ball, and alternate shot. Scramble play is when
everyone tees off and then all the players will play from the player’s ball who had the best shot.
This goes on for the rest of the hole. With best ball, each player plays on all their own individual
shots for the hole, and then the best score of an individual player is used for the team score.
Lastly, is alternate shot. This format is best used for teams of two. Players take turns shooting
on the same ball. For example, player 1 will tee off then player 2 will shoot the next shot from
player 1’s drive.
If this tournament is a fundraiser, there are some things within the tournament that you can
do to raise more money. Firstly, you can have various companies or organizations sponsor
individual holes. Give them a little signage at the hole, and usually you’re good to go. At
company sponsored holes, you can have games that help raise money as well. For example,
say a sports bar sponsors a hole so they want a football related game. For a total of $20 per
team, each player could throw a football xx yards away from the green, and the throw would
then count as their drive. This throw could potentially put them on the green on their initial drive
while raising a little extra money for a good cause.
And the Award Goes to...
After the tournament has played out, host a dinner and awards ceremony for your
participants. If this is a tournament for fun, you might want to hire a comedian or emcee to come host the awards. If it’s a more serious tournament,
you may want to have a sports speaker come to motivate your players and host the event. You can
have awards for the usual things: best team score, hole-in-one, best individual score, etc.;
however, you could get a little silly with it and have awards for worst score, best dressed team,
and goofiest golf outfit. In addition to giving out these awards, you can also have a raffle for any
items you got donated from sponsors. There are many ticketing companies who can provide raffle tickets.
Like I mentioned earlier, you can have meal ready and waiting for your golfers as they come
off the course. Some clubhouses may have an on-site caterer who you could use to provide the post-tournament dinner. If the
course is smaller or doesn’t have someone on-site, you can hire an outside caterer to provide
the food. Since this event is usually a summer event, something as simple as hamburgers,
hotdogs, and potato salad is usually a pretty solid meal you could go with. Also, depending
on the course’s policy for outside food and beverage, you could bring in a bartender to serve up drinks with dinner and the
awards.
If this sounds like a daunting task, you may want to consider hiring an event planner to help organize the
tournament. This person can help with reserving the course, getting promotional material out,
organizing teams, etc. May the best team win!
