Scramble Strategy

[KotOD]

Out of the Scramble thread about hurting or helping your game there has been some conversation about where to put the ringer in the lineup. I thought a new thread might be interesting.

In the groups that I normally put together, we go with a strategy that stacks up like this:

Off of the tee we lead off with the guy that is hitting the ball straight. Normally, in my groups, that's me. I'm 230-250 with 81% fairways this year so it gets a ball in play almost every time. I'll normally put the weakest guy off of the tee next because if your leadoff guy strokes it - #2 can do whatever he wants. If leadoff misses it, it doesn't matter if #2 misses because there are two more behind. We try to put our biggest hitter #3 and our most creative player #4. With a ball in play #3 can rip it. If we need a save at the end (which should be rare in this setup) the creative player doesn't necessarily have to hit driver and can just get one in the fairway.

On fairway play and approaches, we leadoff with our most consistent distance irons player. We want the guy that hits his 5 Iron 195 every time so that we can all club off of him to get a better reading on the yardage. #2 is again our weakest irons player. We try to reserve #4 for someone in the group that hits higher approaches, just to allow them to see the balls in play and go straight for the pin.

In the short game, the only thing that we make sure of is that our most creative guy is last so that he gets a look at lines and speed and if possible, go for the cup.

On the green, our best putter always leads off. He's going to see the line the best and he's going to be able to get the tempo closer than anyone else. We keep going first to worst, closing with our worst putter and allowing him the benefit of seeing the putts before him. We're not big believers in the "let me see a line" theory for good putters. It's a waste of a putt to "get one close" for the benefit of the group. They normally see the line immediately and can try to hole out. If not, each weaker putter behind can glean information from the collection of putts in front of him.