Harding Park Golf Club Match Play Teams – White paper and FAQ – How do I get onto our teams?
Your Harding Park Golf Club sponsors two match play teams – the Thursday team and the Saturday team -- under the NCGA Team Match Play Program. All Club members may play in either or both of our teams and your Board of Directors encourages all to enroll in our teams.
Teams are led by captains chosen by the Club Board of Directors. Before each season, the captains will open team rosters for enrollment. Again, all members may enroll on either or both teams. In general, bigger teams are stronger than smaller teams. Our captains are happier with bigger rosters of available players.
2024 Captains:
Our Thursday team is captained by Steve Schroeder, Saturday by Rick Phillips.
Season and opponents:
During the Team Match Play season (May through July), we compete against other, local clubs in self-organized “pods”. Pod winners move into zone playoffs in August & September with zone winners competing for the championship in October at Poppy Hills GC.
Within the pod, we play pairs of home and away matches. In recent years, opponents in our groupings have included Olympic Club, Presidio, Stonetree, Marin Country Club, Richmond Country Club, Berkeley Country Club, Lake Merced and others. Team match play is a great way to play rounds of competitive golf at some of the finer, local tracks.
Match line-up:
All team members are eligible to play in each match.
Each match home and away will be listed in the Team Match section of Golf Genius.
Members should register for each date they are available to play.
Players will be selected from these rosters.
The line-up for each match consists of twelve players chosen by our team’s captain. Who the captain chooses for each match and how is complicated and described below.
Competition:
Play consists of a team of twelve Club players against twelve opponent players broken into foursomes of two Club players and two opponents across six foursomes.
Each foursome plays in three simultaneous matches: Two individual matches and a Four-Ball (best ball of partners) match. Individual matches are played for 2 points. The Four-Ball match is also played for 2 points. There are 6 points possible in each group of four competitors.
Points from all six foursomes are tallied. The team with the most points wins the match.
Play is net, i.e. each player receives a course handicap. All players will use their current handicap index (maximum of 18.4) for calculation of their course handicap. Players with a current handicap index higher than 18.4 are eligible to compete but must play to the 18.4 maximum.
HPGC Team Match Play is competitive. We want to win all matches and we want to win the championship each year. Along with other considerations, our captains will choose players who the captains think give us the best chance to win.
Costs:
There is no cost to join either team and register for matches. Players will pay for each match in which they play. For 2024, the fee for THU will be $107; for SAT $127.
How do captains choose team players for matches?
The answer is complicated and subjective. The goal of this section is to explain the process as clearly as possible so that all team members understand why they were or were not invited to play in a match.
Before each match, captains will poll the entire team via email to see who is available. Reply to your captain and tell him if you are or are not available. Failure to reply to these initial emails is bad form and decreases your chances of playing in the current match and in future matches.
From those available, the captain will issue invitations to play based on many considerations.
- Captains need to fill the twelve-man line-up with players of different ability from low to high indexes.
Most Club members are middle-index players which means captains have a harder time filling the very low and very high slots in each match’s roster. This is less fair to middle-index players than to high and low-index players, but that is the way it is.
- Captains favor Club players who participate in more Club tournaments.
If you want to increase your chances of playing in a Team match, play in more Club tournaments.
- Captains favor good match-play performers.
If you play well in our Directors Cup (our annual match play tournament), you are more likely to receive match invitations than if you play poorly in the Directors Cup. If you play well in previous team matches, you are more likely to be invited to compete again.
- Captains favor Club players with course knowledge of away matches.
If we are playing Olympic Ocean, for example, it is better for us to field a team with players who have strong Olympic Ocean course knowledge.
- Is your index trending down or up?
Down is good for getting into a match. Up is bad. Captains will look at your recent, posted scores to see how you are playing. Captains might ask you how you are playing before forming a match roster.
- Captains favor responsive players.
Do you reply to emails and texts quickly (or at all)? Do you return phone calls? If you do, you are more likely to be invited to play than if you are less or not responsive.
- When asked to play in the recent past, did you accept or decline the invitation?
Those who accept when asked -- especially for the less popular home matches than the more popular road matches -- are more likely to be asked to play again than those who decline when asked.
- Captains favor “no-drama”, reliable players.
Captains favor players who show up when they say they will and remember those who failed to show when expected. Unexcused absences and last-minute cancellations are very bad if you want to play again.
- Captains want to win.
In the end, captains will pick the team that they, the captain, think is strongest. The final decision is the captains.
We are Harding Park!