How to run a member/guest.

Overview

A member/guest (sometimes called an invitational) is a 2-person team event where each club member invites one guest from outside the club. The field is split into flights based on combined team handicap, so an 8-handicap team never has to beat a scratch team to win something. Within each flight, teams play a round-robin of short matches across the weekend — most commonly 9-hole four-ball match play — and the team with the most points wins the flight. It's part tournament, part party, and by far the hardest event of the year to administer.

How a Member/Guest Works

1. Members register with a guest. Each member signs up and names their guest — usually with the guest's handicap index or GHIN number so flighting is fair. Entry is typically per-team.
2. Teams are flighted by combined handicap. Rank every team by the sum of the two players' handicaps, then split the field into flights of roughly equal size — five or six teams per flight is the sweet spot for a round robin.
3. Each flight plays a round robin. Every team plays every other team in its flight once. With six teams per flight, that's five matches per team across the weekend.
4. Matches are short four-ball match play. The classic setup is 9-hole better-ball matches: each team counts its better net score per hole, and the lower team score wins the hole.
5. Points per hole decide the standings. Win a hole, earn 1 point; halve it, earn ½; lose it, nothing. Points accumulate across all of a team's matches into the flight standings.
6. Flight winners take the flight. The team with the most total points wins its flight. Many clubs then send flight winners into a shootout or “horse race” to crown an overall champion.

What Makes It Hard to Run

Registration is a paper chase. Members sign up at the counter, guests' handicaps trickle in by text, and someone retypes it all into a spreadsheet. Half the field registers before they've even picked a guest.

Flighting is a balancing act. Flights need to be even in size and tight in handicap range, and they get rebuilt every time a team drops out or a guest's index changes.

The tee sheet is a puzzle. A round robin across multiple shotgun waves means every match needs a starting hole, in the right wave, with no team double-booked — for every flight at once. Building it by hand takes a pro an entire evening, and one late dropout breaks it.

Scoring runs all weekend. Points from Friday's matches have to roll into Saturday's standings, per flight, while the field asks “where do we stand?” between every round.

How Duck Hook Golf Runs It

Duck Hook Pro treats the member/guest as a first-class event type and automates every step above:

• Self-registration by link or QR code. Share a public sign-up link or print the ready-made QR sign for the pro shop. Members register themselves and their guest — name, GHIN number, handicap — with no login or app required. Members can even sign up before they've picked a guest and fill them in later. Registration closes automatically at your deadline.
• Auto-flighting with drag-and-drop control. Flights build themselves from combined team handicaps, balanced automatically. Adjust anything on a drag-and-drop flights board: move teams, reorder seeds, add or rename flights. Optional handicap caps keep sandbagging in check, and GHIN indexes are pulled when a guest registers, then re-synced nightly.
• One-click tee sheets. The full weekend's shotgun tee sheet — waves, starting holes, and every round-robin matchup — generates in one click. Lock the event when the field is set so nothing shifts once play begins.
• Live scoring and flight standings. Players score their matches in the free Duck Hook Golf app, points are calculated per hole automatically, and flight standings update live all weekend — in the app, on the web, and on a cycling clubhouse TV leaderboard with a page for every flight.
• Guests arrive ready. Guests who register with an email get a welcome email for the event with a link to the free app, so day one starts with scoring — not tech support.

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