The Grint Tour

3,190 Views | 25 Replies | Last: 2 yr ago by JYDog90
cjsag94
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AG
For the Grint users on here, check out the Grint Tour. They have one in the Dallas area, Austin/San Antonio, and Houston area.

It's flighted by handicap, and includes an optional skins buy-in. I've never played competitive golf before, and played in my first event in Houston last month. The next Houston area tournament is this weekend with a few more left throughout the year. Championship will be in November. You can play in single events, or "join" the tour in a FedEx cup type format.

Check it out if you have any interest in competitive golf, I enjoyed the experience and would love to see it grow.

https://thegrinttour.com/

There's a drop down at the top of the screen to look at each tour.
E
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I'm playing in the one this weekend. Price seemed high to be playing at Clear Creek but i've never played in a real tourney and heard good things about TheGrint tourneys!

We'll see how I play without breakfast balls or gimmies...
cjsag94
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Tour organizer lives in Dallas area, I know he's still trying to learn the Houston area courses. I've never played Clear Creek, hopefully it's a decent course.

You do get half dozen Srixon balls and a $20 PGASS gift card. But it is a for profit business for the organizer as well.
AustinCountyAg
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Please report back after playing. I've been getting emails and trashing them but at the same time it sounds fun. I've never played a competitive true round before.
Hotdog Hamblin
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Clear Creek is a fun course. Can be lengthened out to be a pretty good test and it's in good shape right now. Greens are about as good as I've ever seen them.
cjsag94
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I played last month at Blackhorse. My only criticism, and I've confirmed this is the problem with pretty much all amateur golf competition.. is the lack of knowledge of the rules by many golfers.

Specifically an issue of the proper penalty and drop location based on lost, ob, or ball hit in a hazard. But players were actively (respectfully) holding each other accountable and accepting of being held accountable.
mavsfan4ever
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I played the last Dallas event and am playing the one at rangers golf club. I think they are a lot of fun. My main complaint is the high prices and the lack of prizes. I feel like more money should be paid out to the winners if they are going to keep the prices so high. At least they do have a $20 skins game For each flight that is fully paid out.
terradactylexpress
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I'd be skeptical of a high paying amateur tournament like this not becoming a cheat fest
mavsfan4ever
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Yea that's true. Ive never won, but I dot think you even get anywhere close to even getting your money back If you win. People know that going in and don't play for the purpose of winning the prizes, so it's not that big of deal. But higher prizes would at least make the high buy-ins seem not as bad.
bagger05
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terradactylexpress said:

I'd be skeptical of a high paying amateur tournament like this not becoming a cheat fest

My buddy that played the AmTour in Colorado won some tournaments and things always seemed to be flighted pretty well. Seemed like when he was playing really well he would be in the hunt and if he wasn't really on his game he wouldn't be in the running. You get one or two tournaments of "man I was really on fire today" before they move you up a flight. I think they had a system that weighted your tournament scores WAY heavier than whatever your GHIN said you were.

Based on his feedback (and assuming the crowd at the AmTour is similar to The Grint) people seemed to take it the right amount of serious. I think the fact that you have to put up $190 for a $120 round keeps any people who are totally unserious away, but the fact that you can't actually make any money keeps the cheaters and sandbaggers away.

It sounds like a lot of fun. My buddy in CO had a blast playing those tournaments. And nothing improves your game faster than playing competitively.
bagger05
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How long are the rounds and when are the tee times? I might go give it a shot at Rangers.
cjsag94
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bagger05 said:

How long are the rounds and when are the tee times? I might go give it a shot at Rangers.


The round I played was about 4 1/2 hours. They have a big emphasis on pace of play, as they are utilizing blocks of tee times on the weekend. The course won't let them delay the rest of the not tournament field.

Check the website for times... The last one (Houston) they started at 12:30, this weekend in Houston starts at 9. I'm guessing it depends on what they can get from the course.
cjsag94
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On the cost discussion...

So I paid $75 to join the tour for a year (optional). Then I signed up on the early bird deal for $115 for the clear Creek tournament. Regular sign up for non tour member is $150. The regular weekend greens fee there is $52.

You get 6 golf balls and a $20 pga superstore gift card (assume that is standard amount each tournament). There are trophies and small value prizes for each flight winner. So, gift card and $15 of golf balls meets my cost to $85 vs $52+tax+ range balls.

Then there are prizes for winning the year long tour.. not really sure the magnitude of those.

The rest is profit margin for organizing and growing the tour... Which I appreciate.
Brenner
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Has anyone participated in any other leagues? Was curious and found the Little John Golf league in Houston.. The fees/margins are way lower than TheGrint and looks like most of it goes back into the pot. The league info is very transparent on where the money goes.

I think if you're in to make some money, the better bet is to play in the skins games. I would almost rather just play with a group that plays a skins game than join a league, but haven't found that yet. The season long competition aspect of it is appealing though
cjsag94
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I have not played in other tours. My personal perspective is I want to have fun playing competitive golf. Bragging rights would be purse enough for me! A few dollars either way (costs or winnings) won't really sway my decision to play. Not saying little John or other tours wouldn't deliver on that, just saying none of these involve enough money for it to be a factor.

I recently talked to someone who participates in Houston Traveling Seniors, which looks really similar to little John. HTS has 100-120 players and regularly takes 5-6 hours to play is what I was told (shotgun start though). I think that's a tough situation.
mavsfan4ever
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bagger05 said:

How long are the rounds and when are the tee times? I might go give it a shot at Rangers.
I've only played in two, but neither were long rounds. I think both were between 4 and 4.5 hours.

Like Cjsag said, they put a big emphasis on pace of play. You can be penalized if your group is more than 1 hole behind or doesn't meet the pace of play requirement. I'm sure it depends on who you are paired with, but no one in my groups has been slow.

I think Rangers starts in the morning. Depending on the tournament, sometimes the tee times start early and sometimes they start at 11-12. They try to start early if the course allows them to have those times.

The championship flight gets the first tee times and then it goes down from there. They publish the groups and tee times a couple of days before the tournament.
jonj101
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I've played in the Golfweek Am League in Houston. The guy that runs it is very organized and does a number of supplemental games in addition to the placement prizes (Stableford, etc.)

I haven't been able to participate much this year, but most of the people I've interacted with have been respectful of the rules and pretty chill.

Check it out here: https://www.amateurgolftour.net/houston_tour_pages/default6.asp
OilandGasAg2014
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Thinking about signing up for the tournament at Rangers.. hard to convince myself to pay that hefty tournament fee though.
Funky Winkerbean
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Flighted amateur events that have cash prizes are a sandbaggers happy place.
It is so easy to be wrong—and to persist in being wrong—when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.
Thomas Sowell
mavsfan4ever
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Yea sandbaggers would ruin these tournaments. But no one is saying they should get to a point where the cash prizes are so large that the sandbaggers come out in full force. They could still have a dramatic increase in cash/prizes and not attract any sandbaggers.

For instance, for next weekend, the entry fee is $190-240. If you win your flight and get $100 or so in cash/prizes, then they could up that to $300 and not worry about any sandbaggers coming out.

I'm honestly not even sure if the winners get any cash at all. It may just be a trophy and a couple of prizes.

Edit: if they give out large cash prizes to the end of the year winners for each flight, then that would change things (maybe they do). I would then understand why they don't give out any cash/prizes for the individual tournaments.
terradactylexpress
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Year long tournaments should solve the problem as you move up/down flights
mavsfan4ever
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Yea, I they have certain parameters in place to move sandbaggers to the next flight quickly. I don't think there is anything to worry about with sandbaggers in these tournaments.

Here are the Rules and Guidelines for the tour. They cover pretty much everything from entry fees, prizes, the point system, the sandbag deterrents, etc. https://s3.amazonaws.com/grinttours/file_6924_1590439489.pdf

I think Bagger's post about the Colorado Tour is pretty spot on with this tour. People take it the right amount of seriously. It's serious enough that everyone tries hard and it's competitive, but not so serious that you can't have some beers.

If anyone is playing Rangers next weekend, maybe I'll see you out there. Looking forward to finally getting to play that course. I've heard good things.
jonj101
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The tour I posted about above has some protections against sandbaggers (auto flight promotions, limits on wins for first timers, etc.)
cjsag94
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So does the Grint.. I think they all do.

Lots of scrutiny on these things..I think everyone is way over thinking it. They are fun, I wouldn't even remotely consider doing it for the money. If it isn't worth the price of admission, or worried about sand bagger running it for you.. don't sign up. Like I said, my biggest concern had been half of golfers clearly don't really understand the rules of golf. I've also figured out I have an advantage because my handicap is legitimate. I think most people play much worse than their handicap (see lack of understanding of rules).

Surprised at the views people have about that tournaments... Gotta admit none of these concerns occurred to me, or worry me moving forward. These are essentially weekend hacker amateur tournaments, very imperfect events.

Pay a little, come out and have fun, and see how you do when every stroke counts.
JYDog90
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Is anyone playing in the one tomorrow at Gleannloch?
Formerly Willy Wonka
cjsag94
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I played in most of the rounds last year but moved on from the tour this year. Not enough participation, some flights had sufficient representation but I played in several tournaments with just 1 other player in my flight, which pretty much defeats the purpose. I played in the birdie flight hc 11-16 I believe.

Had another issue early on where they had a guy show up with an 7 hc, but they looked at his history of only a few rounds and decided he should play at a 12. He won the flight (I took 2nd) shooting an 83. After next few events, his 7 was definitely accurate.

Just wasn't impressed as every event there were just little things like that that I found frustrating. Hopefully they are doing better this year.
JYDog90
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Not so much. In the championship flight there were 2 guys, in my flight (the albatross) there were 4. I think there were 21 guys total.

The guys were nice and it was well run. Just hard to pay $170 to play Gleannloch.
Formerly Willy Wonka
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