Scramble Teams for the Pinehurst Terrapin Classic

Michael O. Ball, University of Maryland - College Park
Russell Halper, University of Maryland - College Park

Abstract

The Pinehurst Terrapin Classic (PTC) is a five day, 16 player, annual golf tournament that includes match-play and scramble rounds. Pairings must be created for each day of the tournament that ensure each pair of participants play on the same team at least once during the tournament, and ensure that the teams for each scramble round are of comparable ability. Over the past four years, both a simple interactive, spreadsheet-based heuristic and an integer programming model have been developed to create the pairings. These both rely on very special properties of the structure of this tournament. In this paper, we describe this structure, the methods used to create the pairings and the experience with the use of these methods over the most recent years.

Recommended Citation

Ball, Michael O. and Halper, Russell (2009) "Scramble Teams for the Pinehurst Terrapin Classic," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports: Vol. 5 : Iss. 2, Article 10.
DOI: 10.2202/1559-0410.1180
Available at: http://www.bepress.com/jqas/vol5/iss2/10

 
 
 
 

ISSN: 1559-0410 ©1999-2009 The Berkeley Electronic Press™ All rights reserved.

To submit, subscribe, recommend this journal to your library, or sign up for email alerts, please visit: http://www.bepress.com/jqas