I was on the Summer Board of Governors at Yeamans Hall Golf Course in Hanahan, SC. A bunch of us ran a Blitz on Saturday and Sunday. A couple of us would make up the 4 person teams and send everyone out to compete. We tried to ensure that all the teams were equal, but you know how that works. Joe wants to play with Steve and Laura, Stan wants to play with Gordy, but don’t team him up with Jerry. It got very complicated. Finally, I decided to design a computer program that used handicaps and a formula to make the teams and eliminate any perception that we were influenced in our decision making. When we compared the sum of the numerical position on the Roster for each member of a team, we found they were all the same. It is much fairer and far more accurate than our manual attempts and since you can't please everyone, it was a good compromise and accepted by all.
This was before the internet, mind you, but I had an epiphany one day. If the computer could make teams for our small group, it could make teams for any group, no matter how large. And if it could make teams from a disparate group from many courses, wouldn't that be one heck of a tournament? But how do you compare scores from different courses? We are using the Course Rating of the Tee Box you play from instead of PAR for the course when we calculate your scores. Now you can argue that this isn't a perfect solution, but there are lots of other factors in play that mitigate any disparities between a course's overall difficulty rating. And the fact is, I wrote a program that did just that. We first ran it in 1985 using three courses, Kings Grant, Berkely CC and Yeamans Hall. I stationed volunteers at the three courses who called in the scores. We all were very excited to see the results. It worked like a charm, but determined it just wasn't very feasible to expect volunteers to do this kind of work every weekend so the idea was set aside.
A few years later in 1991, I revived the program. I installed computers in 11 golf courses in the Charleston area: Yeamans Hall, Berkeley Country Club at Exeter Plantation, Shadowmoss CC, Patriots Point Links, Country Club of Charleston, Charleston Municipal Golf Course, Miler Country Club, Wrenwoods at Charleston AFB, Snee Farm Country Club, as well as Kings Grant, now defunct and The Oaks also defunct. At one time the registered membership was over 800. But still the technical issues were not resolvable. It required us to install a computer in every Golf Course and hook up a 2400 baud modem requiring additional phone lines and expense. It still was not the right time.
So here we are today. Just about everyone has access to the internet. That means that anyone who wishes to participate in the BIG BLITZ and who can post a score from an organized Golf event can now participate in potentially the largest participatory sporting event in the World.......Each and EVERY DAY! If you do not play in the Big Blitz at your course, contact our Webmaster for details on how your course can participate in THE BIG BLITZ!
I would like to update this comment to indicate that now is the time to turn the idea of the BIG BLITZ into a tournament that has meaning by supporting our First Responders and Warriors who have given everything to us. We want to give back to them that have given so much. After paying out 70% of the entry fee to the winners, we will donate 20% of the prize pool to those deserving folks who are there when we need them.