The Foremates blog
Notes from
the 19th.
Ideas for the people who organise the golf.
And the people who love to play it.
Less Admin, More Club: A Practical Guide to AI Tournament Management
Put AI to work around the jobs that take your team away from members: tournament planning, player updates and useful reporting.
Read the storyBetter Corporate Golf Days with Software and AI
Connect the guest experience before, during and after the event, with practical ways to use software and AI without losing the personal touch.
Read the storyPlanning the Perfect Golf Day: A Step-by-Step Guide
A great golf day almost never happens by accident. The ones people talk about for months, the smooth draw, the format that had everyone laughing, the prize table, the meal that turned up hot and on time, are the ones somebody quietly planned to death weeks beforehand. The good news is that the planning isn’t hard; it’s just a checklist done in the right order, early enough that nothing’s a scramble on the morning. Whether you’re running a society major, a corporate day or a stag do that happens to involve clubs, the same steps apply. Here’s how to build a day that flows from the first bacon roll to the last putt and on into the evening, with a plan for the one thing you can’t book: the British weather.
Read the storyHow to Organise a Golf Society: The Complete Playbook
Every golf society starts the same way: a handful of mates who fancy a regular game somewhere other than the clubhouse bar. Then someone gets voted captain, a WhatsApp group appears, and within a season you’ve got thirty members, a waiting list, and an argument about who owes what for the away day. None of that is a bad thing. It just means your society has outgrown a single group chat. This is the playbook we wish someone had handed us when we started: the roles, the money, the fixtures, the formats and the small admin habits that keep a society running for years rather than fizzling out after eighteen months.
Read the story12 Golf Formats That Keep Every Player in the Game
The quickest way to tire of golf with the same crowd is to play the same game every week. The format is the flavouring: swap it around and a familiar course, a familiar four and a familiar Saturday feel new again. The right format also does something kinder; it drags every player into the contest, so the lad off 24 has as much to offer his team as the one off 6, and nobody’s round is dead by the ninth. Here are twelve formats worth having in your locker, grouped by the sort of day they suit, from big-society team games to the little side bets that keep a fourball needling each other to the last putt. Pick the one that fits your group and your mood, and rotate them through the season.
Read the storyStableford Scoring Explained: Points, Strategy and Why Groups Love It
Ask a room full of club golfers what they’re playing on a Saturday and, more often than not, the answer is Stableford. It’s the format that lets a fifteen-handicapper and a scratch player tee it up in the same competition and both walk off with a genuine chance of winning. Instead of counting every last shot, you collect points against your own handicap, hole by hole, and the worst you can score on any hole is nothing at all. That single idea, that a disaster costs you a blank rather than your whole card, is why roll-ups and society days lean on it so heavily. Here’s where it came from, how the points stack up, and how to squeeze the most out of a round.
Read the storyHow to Use GPS Yardages to Actually Score Better
Almost every golfer now walks to the ball, glances at a watch or a phone and gets a yardage to the pin. That’s a genuine gift, our parents paced it out from the sprinkler heads, but a number on its own doesn’t save you a single shot. The players who actually score better with GPS aren’t the ones with the fanciest device; they’re the ones who know which number to trust, how the hole in front of them changes it, and which club they can hit that far when they’re not flushing it. This guide is about turning the raw yardage into a decision you can commit to, from reading the three numbers to every green to doing the hazard maths without a calculator.
Read the storyUnderstanding Your Handicap Trend (and How to Move It)
Most golfers treat their handicap like a school report: a single number that says how good they are, updated now and then to praise or punish them. That’s not really what it is. Under the World Handicap System, your Handicap Index reflects demonstrated ability rather than a simple average of every score. Once you have twenty scores, the best eight Score Differentials form the starting point, with safeguards that can adjust the result. That makes the trend useful, while still allowing a very strong round to make a meaningful difference. This is a plain-English tour of how the number is actually worked out, why the trend behind it tells you far more, and where to spend your practice time to bend that trend downwards.
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