Golf League Balanced Schedule

[fishdawg]

I am in charge of making a schedule for a golf league with 16 teams.  We are playing an 18 week schedule, so we decided to break our league up into 4 divisions with 4 teams in each division, so that the scheduling could break out as follows:

2 matches against each team in your own division = 6 matches
1 match against each team NOT in your division = 12 matches

We also like to try to make sure each team has balanced tee-times (meaning they don't always tee off in the latter half and get stuck in the back of the pack every week).  The only exception to that is that Team #1 has the league secretary who collects everyone's scores.  So, Team #1 *always* gets the first tee-time.

I have been looking online for a freeware scheduling program to help me with this... and I have not yet found a good one.  It seems like this would be a challenge to try to do it by hand.  So, I came across this site and was hoping someone here might have input on how to do this.  Or... possibly even have a schedule in hand already for this scenario.

Ultimately... I am worried more about just getting the match scheduling done (2 against teams in division and 1 against teams not in division) than the balancing of the tee-times.  If I have a schedule in hand, I can always manually change the ordering of teams to try to balance the tee-times.

Any help/direction would be much appreciated!!!  Thanks!!!

[Ian Wakeling]

I don't know of any software that will solve your golf scheduling problem, however I think I can give you the basis of a solution.  It is possible to divide the 18 weeks up such that all the matches in a round are of the same type:

Inter-Divisional (12 weeks)
(A1 B1) (C1 D1) (A2 B3) (C4 D2) (A3 B4) (C2 D3) (A4 B2) (C3 D4)
(A1 C1) (B1 D1) (A2 C4) (B3 D2) (A3 C2) (B4 D3) (A4 C3) (B2 D4)
(A1 D1) (B1 C1) (A2 D2) (B3 C4) (A3 D3) (B4 C2) (A4 D4) (B2 C3)
(A2 B2) (C2 D1) (A1 B4) (C3 D2) (A4 B3) (C1 D3) (A3 B1) (C4 D4)
(A2 C2) (B2 D1) (A1 C3) (B4 D2) (A4 C1) (B3 D3) (A3 C4) (B1 D4)
(A2 D1) (B2 C2) (A1 D2) (B4 C3) (A4 D3) (B3 C1) (A3 D4) (B1 C4)
(A3 B3) (C3 D1) (A4 B1) (C2 D2) (A1 B2) (C4 D3) (A2 B4) (C1 D4)
(A3 C3) (B3 D1) (A4 C2) (B1 D2) (A1 C4) (B2 D3) (A2 C1) (B4 D4)
(A3 D1) (B3 C3) (A4 D2) (B1 C2) (A1 D3) (B2 C4) (A2 D4) (B4 C1)
(A4 B4) (C4 D1) (A3 B2) (C1 D2) (A2 B1) (C3 D3) (A1 B3) (C2 D4)
(A4 C4) (B4 D1) (A3 C1) (B2 D2) (A2 C3) (B1 D3) (A1 C2) (B3 D4)
(A4 D1) (B4 C4) (A3 D2) (B2 C1) (A2 D3) (B1 C3) (A1 D4) (B3 C2)

Intra-Divisional (play twice - 6 weeks)
(A1 A2) (A3 A4) (B1 B2) (B3 B4) (C1 C2) (C3 C4) (D1 D2) (D3 D4)
(A1 A3) (A2 A4) (B1 B3) (B2 B4) (C1 C3) (C2 C4) (D1 D3) (D2 D4)
(A1 A4) (A2 A3) (B1 B4) (B2 B3) (C1 C4) (C2 C3) (D1 D4) (D2 D3)

Of course you are free to play the 18 weeks in any order you wish, and you will also need to reorder the matches within a week to try to meet your preferred tee-time criteria.

Hope that helps.

[fishdawg]

Perfect!  That helps tremendously... thanks!