bagger05 said:

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I've always thought of best ball as you each play your own ball and the best score counts. I get a 5, you get a 4, that means our team cards a 4.

Scramble is we each take a shot, pick which one we like better, and then play our next shot from there, repeat until one of us holes out.

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Correct

You are absolutely correct.
One of the biggest things people seem to miss is this…..there very specific locations you have to the ball to in order to even have a chance.

I have had the opportunity to play a couple of courses that were "tour ready", tee to green, not a problem, the putting was something I never imagined. I.e. I missed a 3' birdie putt by nothing and my putt coming back was around 30'. Like I said, very specific locations.

jj9000 said:

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The Lost said:

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jj9000 said:

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Tony Romo at Maridoe seems like a fair comparison.

Maridoe from the tips is 80.5/155...which rates more difficult than Augusta.

Tony is a +3.5 at Maridoe.

Put 2 Tony Romos at Augusta...playing a Best Ball Scramble...and they're in contention on Sunday.

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Lol go look at how tony has done on any korn ferry/pga tour event and it'll confirm how much harder those events are. No way they'd be consistent enough over 4 days. Dude usually puts a decent round and a **** round together to miss the cut.

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That's 1 Romo...this is the fallacy in most people's logic.

Every shot gets to be hit by another Romo...not hit by Romo #1. Romo #1 is not dropping 2 balls. There's another standalone Romo hitting the 2nd ball...lift/clean/place. Includes putting. If Romo #1 is having a bad day, he gets Romo #2 to bail him out when he needs bailing out.

I still say Romo #1 and #2 competes at Augusta.

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Pressure of romo 1 sucking is gonna crush romo two going into hero mode.

We've all seen playoff romo, he's no kind of mj, Kobe, horry under pressure.

I agree that tee to green, two +2's are gonna pile up GIR's and the putting at AN is the main challenge. But this is also the beauty of having 2 attempts at putts. "Holy ****, I just ran that 10+ feet past" leads to the 2nd guy cautiously nestling one in closer to tap-in range. And having 2 cracks at those testy 4-6 footers is huge. Saves pars and helps finish off birdies on the short par 5s. I think two legit +2s pile up a ****load of pars, and then there are some scoring holes out there.

I'd love to do it, but am certainly not confident in any sort of success, which I guess would validate what I have been saying all along. +2s aren't as good as people think they are.

I'd love to play Maridoe though.

I'd say not all +2s are the same. The one that rarely leaves his home course, rarely if ever plays competitive golf, is a bit generous with his gimmes, bumps an occasional lie, may not turn in that occasional scorecard when conditions were tough or he just didn't have it. That isn't the +2 I'm thinking about here

Me neither. We are talking about legit competition +2 players.

Maridoe is a beast. I had some friends play a tourney there and they had no clue where to hit it off the tee. And I'm not talking about what side of the fairway you should aim for. They just didn't even know where generally they should hit it on some holes.

agsalaska said:

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Me neither. We are talking about legit competition +2 players.

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Well in that case, yes, they are indeed as good as some of us are saying.

Tee to green 2 of these guys would have every shot in the bag. The double putt attempts would be massive and I don't think that it can be understated in this scenario.

Knox can score well in the tourney, heck even Fred Couples and older golfers have had success at Augusta.

Chipotlemonger said:

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Yes I think those 2 explanations are the tried and true ones.

Sometimes I'd do "best ball (off the tee)" with family and just shorten it to best ball. But you have it right.

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That's a shamble. Scramble your drive and then play your ball out from there and take your best score.

Got any +2 buddies or anyone on here that's a +2 want to play a scramble vs a tour guy at maridoe?

Aggie369 said:

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Got any +2 buddies or anyone on here that's a +2 want to play a scramble vs a tour guy at maridoe?

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I love this thread. Seriously.

Aggie369 said:

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Got any +2 buddies or anyone on here that's a +2 want to play a scramble vs a tour guy at maridoe?

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Now we're talking. And we will need to get the Texags video crew involved if this happens.

I think I just witnessed the birth of Texags version of fore play.

This is a fun thread. I was firmly in the camp of the +2s not contending and probably not even making the cut, but I'm questioning myself a bit. I still don't think they'd contend, but I don't know, they might could finish in the top 25 if they putted well. I'm as undecided as ever.

Yesterday said:

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watty said:

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This is a fun thread. I was firmly in the camp of the +2s not contending and probably not even making the cut, but I'm questioning myself a bit. I still don't think they'd contend, but I don't know, they might could finish in the top 25 if they putted well. I'm as undecided as ever.

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This is texags. Be a man and take one position or the other and then make fun of all of those opposed to said position.

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I still stand in the camp that says that on a "normal' day, there's no way they're competing. But I just wonder if they have a really good day on the greens and they are long enough hitters to at least be hitting irons on every approach, maybe they could get "hot" and shoot even par? But I still look at the best players in the world, who are accustomed to the pressure and have played the course dozens of times in some cases, and I see some of them shooting 78 and 80, I have a hard time seeing the +2s going sub-75.

Yet one +1 routinely did it by himself.

And that's the one thing on this thread that does have me questioning myself a little bit. But he's such an outlier. I mean, he shot a 70 or whatever, but a bunch of +6s hack around every year and shoot 79. Knox is either much better than a +1, or he has played out of his mind in a way that isn't realistic to expect of others.

I want to see what Knox would shoot over four days as an actual competitor.

I've looked him up. +1.5 right now. Low +2.7

The scramble aspect is huge at a course like AN. At a US Open where fairways are tight, rough is super punitive, and both balls are routinely in the rough and will have to hack out. Problemos. But that's not AN.

I'd offer that Knox is an "exception" in that his handicap is fully legit. His putting is what is usually called out as exceptional. But that's also where 2 attempts is huge.

And at this point, can't we just assume Knox is going to be one of the 2 players? So we're taking his experience and ability to shoot par on a Masters Sunday and improving it from there, with a second ball of another legit +2...and now we're competing to win the thing.

I asked my guy if he had played anything like this before and he said he and a top50 pga tour guy got approached at TPC Las Colinas to play 2 guys...

1 of the guys had played some PGA events but never got his card...the other was about a +2 or +3. They played a scramble from men's tees and my guy and his PGA Tour buddy played best ball from tips. The bet was $10,000

They tied

Aggie369 said:

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I asked my guy if he had played anything like this before and he said he and a top50 pga tour guy got approached at TPC Las Colinas to play 2 guys...

1 of the guys had played some PGA events but never got his card...the other was about a +2 or +3. They played a scramble from men's tees and my guy and his PGA Tour buddy played best ball from tips. The bet was $10,000

They tied

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Was it Austin Connelly and Justin Bates by chance?

Lol, not sure but I doubt it
That would be funny if it was though...Bates is coming down to Houston this next week to put a putting green in my back yard

Are u asking if the 2 random guys who bet my buddy was Bates and Austin?

you gotta figure PGA Tour guys are gonna each hit 14-16 greens, and out of that how many serious good looks will they get at birdie.

you gotta figure the Ams as a scramble are gonna hit 17-18 greens, but how many serious good looks will they get at birdie? I think that is the key, and I think where this will fall is not so much putting but iron play.

Would be interesting to do

There's no way the amateurs are hitting 17-18 greens, IMO. Take for example #10, #11, and #12. Without looking, I'm positive that there were several examples of both pros in a pairing being in the fairway, and both missing the green. Or both pros missing the green on 12 despite having the ball teed up.

Only 24 players hit at least 60% of the greens in the Masters this year, with the leader hitting 71%. Scheffler hit 68%. Collin Morikawa, the best ball striker alive currently, had a round where he hit just 9/18 greens.

The leaders for fairways were just over 80%. But some people, really great golfers like Justin Thomas and Sergio Garcia, only hit 60%.

These amateurs aren't the ball strikers that these major winning, top 25 in the world guys are. They're neither as long nor as accurate.

Let's assume that on their own, each of these amateur guys could manage 60% fairways out there. That means they're still, even when scrambling, going to probably miss 2-3 fairways. Let's say they miss 3. Now they are firing from the fairway on 11 holes, and from the tee box on 4 more, so they'll have 15 clean opportunities at a GIR. Let's pretend that on their own, these guys would each hit 75% of the GIRs from the fairway or tee box, which is already being generous. That means odds are, they're still missing at least a couple, plus they'll likely miss one or two from off the fairway.

In short, 14-16 GIRs would be their max, IMO. Hitting 16, even when scrambling, would be a huge accomplishment. I think they'd hit 14ish on a normal day, assuming they were playing well. Especially when you consider the uneven lies.

Some of those greens are really hard to hit, even for the best in the world.

None of that is accounting for the pressure of playing on that stage, either.

Does 4 rounds make it harder or easier? Or said in a different way…is the scoring range for the amateurs more volatile or more steady than a tour pros?

Let's say winning score is -12. (-5 to -18 I think is the range for winners by memory).

How would these amateurs get to that number? A pro likely has 4 rounds in the upper 60s. Would the amateurs have low round of the tournament one day and scramble over par another? If one partner is off his game they're in deep trouble and the average round for a +2 is still above par I would imagine.



And can't underestimate the nerves of Hole 1 tee shot on Thursday and then the entire back 9 on Sunday if they're in contention.

The assertion they could contend begins and ends with both ams being on point all 4 days. If one guy has to go it essentially alone one day they might get swamped.

I don't see any two amateurs bringing it for 72 holes each under the conditions of playing in the Masters.

It's more likely they buckle completely.

I don't think they could compete, in large part, because of the pressure of a tournament of that scale.

It's one thing to shoot 2 under on a nice course under normal conditions, its entirely different to do that on a course set up for the pros under tournament pressure.

I would think that 2 +2 handicappers in the Masters would struggle to shoot better than 77-80 in a scramble. They might be able to shoot par just playing the course but in the Masters it all changes. I don't think many of you have a real appreciation of how difficult a tour setup is and the pressure of a major.

I think we do, but we also have live evidence of older players and Knox doing just fine on the course. Essentially we would have a Knox clone to go with Knox. I can't see how that combo wouldn't make the cut at least.

At the Masters, the setup are the greens. They don't grow the rough. Strokes lost impact from missing fairways is lower than an average tour stop (ie missing fairways is significantly less punitive). The main defense it has is being a course with the highest % of 3putts of any tour stop, which is partly because the greens are undulating making it hard to get an approach to finish as close to the hole and easier to 3putt. But again, putting is where the scramble format provides the biggest advantage. Those surprises that the PGA players get running one 6-8ft past and then missing the come-backer are significantly mitigated. 2nd putter can incorporate what he learned on the 1st attempt, and when you do need to make a comebacker, getting 2 chances is huge.