Golf schedule help

[cjh774]

Hi,  
 
I am new and have used your info in the past, however I am putting together as close to a round robin tourney I can for a group of 20 golfers playing eight 9 hole rounds.  My goal is to play in foursomes.  Here is the plan of playing...play 18 holes day 1, then another 18 holes plus 9 holes on day 2 and 3.  That is my 8 rounds.  I am trying to mix up as many players as I can, and trying to get as many players to play with as many foursomes as possible.  My problem is on the 18 hole rounds, I would like to just change opponents within the foursome, as to not hold up play.  I hope this is making since, and if not please ask questions.  Will you be able to offer some assistance?
 
Thanks a whole lot!!!!

[Ian Wakeling]

Hi,

Thanks for your message.  I think when you write 'change opponents within the foursome' you imply that there is a 2 vs 2 format with each foursome.  Is that correct?  This would be classic 'doubles play' and you could look for a schedule where each player was partnered with 9 different players and opposes 18 different players over the 9 rounds.  Unfortunately the 18 different opponents objective is at odds with your desire to change around within a foursome, since whenever you do this, you will end up repeating two pairs of players who play in opposition.  I have no way of constructing a schedule that might trade these two things off against each other, so I can only help if you can allow free mixing of foursomes between rounds.

Ian.

[cjh774]

Thanks for your reply.  I appreciate it.  Maybe I can clarify more, for the groups of foursomes, I was trying not to jumble the groups up with players from the other foursomes, as to not hold up play on the course.  So at the start of the day of 18 hole play, the same four players would just switch partners inside the group, which would make up 2 "games" that each player would play.  As for the 9 hole rounds after a break we can have completely different partners from any of the other foursomes.  Maybe it would be like having 5 different locations for play with groups of 4 players for 6 games where only every 2 rounds major changes would be permitted, and the 2 remaining "games" the more random partner the better.  

Once again I hope it makes sense, and very much appreciate your reply.

Thanks
Chris

[Ian Wakeling]

Thanks, I think I understand now.   Take the schedule for 20 players from Ed Pegg's page here (see just under the pentagonal pattern), this will provide the basic pattern for the schedule.   In this schedule no pair of players ever appears together more than once in a foursome, so you can choose to divide up the foursomes into pairs in any way you like.  So for each foursome in the schedule, such as (A B C D), split it in the middle and tee off as  (A B) vs (C D).  Your 18 hole rounds will correspond to  days 1, 2 & 4 in the schedule, and for those rounds play (A C) vs (B D) on the back 9.

You might want to randomize the order of the foursomes within a day, as the others might complain when they see that player A is always going off first.

Hope that helps,

Ian.

[cjh774]

It helps,

Thank you very much for your replies and of course the speed of them also.

Chris