Birdshot's Loch & Load at MacGregor Park - 10/23/2010

[bmugwump]

Bragger's rights mostly....many clubs and/or courses have their own tags. For instance, a group of us meet at Jack Brooks park to play a round...not for money, just a casual round....and someone will say, "Wanna play for tags?". First place gets the lowest numbered tag & so on...it doesn't make any kind of difference on your score or anything, it's just something simple to compete for (other than money!). Now....if you've got 89 players with bag-tags (which we didn't...there were only 20-something tags put in Saturday) it takes a while to sort them all out....and if people are tied then you have to know the tag number they started with & the player with the lower tag coming in would get the lower tag going out, etc. Like I said, if there's just a small group playing for tags it's EZ....when you get a lot of people, not so EZ!

[ChrisMacG]

Originally Posted by bmugwump

Like I said, if there's just a small group playing for tags it's EZ....when you get a lot of people, not so EZ!

You did a great job getting them sorted at MacGregor Billy.

[ERicJ]

Originally Posted by bmugwump

Bragger's rights mostly....many clubs and/or courses have their own tags. For instance, a group of us meet at Jack Brooks park to play a round...not for money, just a casual round....and someone will say, "Wanna play for tags?". First place gets the lowest numbered tag & so on...it doesn't make any kind of difference on your score or anything, it's just something simple to compete for (other than money!). Now....if you've got 89 players with bag-tags (which we didn't...there were only 20-something tags put in Saturday) it takes a while to sort them all out....and if people are tied then you have to know the tag number they started with & the player with the lower tag coming in would get the lower tag going out, etc. Like I said, if there's just a small group playing for tags it's EZ....when you get a lot of people, not so EZ!

Actually, a lot of those other clubs or courses that have tags use them in a meaningful way. Essentially, there is a reward beyond bragging rights for having a valued (low #) tag at the end of the season. Sometimes it's money. Sometimes it's an invite to a restricted entry tournament. There are a lot of possibilities.

Of course once you start something like that you need a more rigidly defined set of rules... such as: playing in a sanctioned Birdshot tournament you must submit your bag tag or forfeit any tag benefits. If challenged on a course for a casual round, you must accept at least once challenge a week. In casual rounds you are only required to accept challenges from players with 12 tags of your own. Etc.

But effectively right now the Birdshot tags are only bragging rights. With the amount of work that goes into collecting, sorting, and reallocating them it might be nice if they counted for something more.