Irish Golfer Modified local rule

It's allowed under the rules of golf. I'd argue that all club majors should require a drop down as well.

It certainly is interesting. These big prize open comps are something I'm really not familiar with. I can imagine how they'd have issues with huge amounts of bandits when the prizes are so extravagant. It's one of the reasons I don't like extravagant prizes - it encourages handicap cheating.

Most measures suggested to deal with handicap issues since the introduction of WHS seem to focus on the really high handicaps and beginners. And that's fine - there are issues there. But generally speaking, when I hear about 50+ point scores they tend to be in random comps - midweek opens and the like. But when people are getting exercised talking about the problem they talk about club majors - Captains prize most often. For me these are two very different issues. The rapidly improving guys who got big handicaps often have no sense of the Captains prize being significantly different to other comps. And more importantly, they're not trying to cheat. So if they're going well in a comp they want to return the best score possible, irrespective of the prize on offer.

The stories I hear of bandits winning Captains prizes tend to be seasoned golfers, not playing off massively high handicaps, but rather the likes of guys playing off a high teens handicap when most would say should be off a low teen handicap. And they're the guys who were at it before WHS ever came along. So requiring lads to have 20 scores, be a member over a year, having a max handicap - these rules will actually just help them win as it will take away the potential of a really high handicap coming in with a great score.

That odds table is hard to argue with. I'm assuming that it's accurate and I must admit I'm surprised by some of the odds on it, but I won't go off on a tangent on that. But analysing players scores over the club majors to see how often they're coming in with anomalies would be very interesting. I'm not sure where you go from there though, it would be extremely difficult to come up with a fair club rule for it.

I played in one of these a good few years back. Once was enough. One team of four (all same surname) each took a big prize ….. nett/gross scores/longest drive/closest to pin. What are those odds? Same surname across most events that year.

I've never played one of these events, was thinking about Tralee but see its booked up. Probably a cheaper option anyway would be the scratch cup route to play the better courses