Happy Halloween!

Hell Day Tournament Format

Here’s a fun idea for your golf league for this time of year. My league has started doing “Hell Day” for it’s final tournament of the year since it’s so close to Halloween. During Hell Day we set the course up to be extremely difficult. This year we had it so tough that 9 over par (for 9 holes) was the winner and he was 5 shots clear of anyone else.

Tee Boxes

Put the tees in crazy places like bushes, dirt roads, side hill lies, behind trees etc. On one hole this year we put the tee over 100 yards farther back than the black tees on a par 4. One person out of 60 got a par and won a skin. It was a 310 yard carry to reach the fairway.

On #12 this year we forced all players to tee off with their driver. The problem is that #12 is a 162 yard par 3 over a hazard!

On #10 we put the tee waaaay back. In the pic below you can see the tee box. It’s about 320 to the fairway from here and the fairway is only about 10 yards wide at the opening with hazard on both sides!

Fairway

We brought a bunch of pumpkins in for Hell Day. Some pumpkins we’ll place in the fairway and the players are required to hit the fairway pumpkin on a par 4 or par 5 before they can hit their approach shot to the green. The funny thing is that when the ball hits the pumpkin it doesn’t go very far. The ball ends up so close that the pumpkin interferes with your swing.

Another hellish thing we do on par 4’s or 5’s is make the player hit into a fairway bunker before he’s allowed to go for the green.

Greens

On Hell Day we put the pins in the worst possible place you can imagine. Some pins we’ll put on the fringe and some we’ve even put IN a greenside bunker.

This year on #14 we put the pin on a severe tier (pic below). This is a drivable par 4. I drove the green and proceeded to score an 11 as I 10-putted. I’d putt the ball up to the hole and it would roll 25 feet right back to me.

I drove this par 4 but 10-putted for an 11!

We also took some small pumpkins and put them around the hole to make players putt around them.

#15 this year we put 3 pins in the green: front, middle and back. I kept telling everyone “hey you’re pin high” but no one got the joke. A couple of years ago we put about 10 holes in a green with no flags. You just putt to the nearest hole.

Another fun thing to do is put one big hole in the green. One year we did this on a hole which had two greens. The hole was about 2 feet wide. It was funny to hear people saying “play it right edge” or “I lipped out on a that one.”

Other ideas

I’ve heard many crazy and great ideas for tournaments like this. One good idea is to have set of right and left handed rental clubs on one hole and force the player to tee off left handed (for right handed players).