Every Golf Scramble Needs To Start Implementing Making The Top 3 Teams Play A Playoff Hole Against Each Other
The thing that is great about golf is that it's one of the only sports that is truly capable of showing the exact type of human you are. Some people take it aggressively seriously, others are just out there for fun. Some people are self-aware enough to play from the correct tees, other people have such an inflated sense of themselves that they only play from the tips even though they're not that good. Some people respect the tradition and decorum of dressing appropriately on the course, others will show up with their shirt untucked and a backwards hat.
And most importantly--some people will play the game with honor and integrity, while others will constantly try to cheat their way through a round.
I'm sure everybody has played in a scramble before where one team--often the most disheveled looking group at the outing--comes in with a drastically lower score than everybody else. You look at them and think to yourself that there's no possible way they could have pieced together a round that low. You saw a few of them take some hacks on the range before the shotgun start, and it looked like the middle of their club faces has never even touched a ball. Yet somehow they came in at 20 under as the last group to finish.
They know they're lying. We all know they're lying. They know that we know they're lying. Yet nobody ever does or says anything about it. Because everybody else has too much honor and integrity to question theirs. So instead of leaving it up to somebody else calling these schmucks out, every scramble format should finish with the top 3 teams all playing a playoff hole to determine a winner.
There's no hiding. There's no taking any free drops. There's no way to cheat your way out of this one while all eyes are on you. It's the perfect way for the game to police itself. And quite frankly, it's crazy this hasn't already been standard procedure. I guess because nobody wants to believe that there would be cheaters and thieves amongst them. But this is the world we live in today, and something needs to be done to send these people back to their shanties.