Tour Description.

General

This Tour is organized solely for offline play. Scratch and handicap play are catered for.
Scores submitted from play in a tournament are used to produce both types of results

Tournaments.

The normal format is a 4 round tournament each week played from the black tees. Any temporary variation will be posted prominently in connection with the details of the tournament being played.
Tournaments are played over 4 days between Thursday and Sunday.
Once registered, a player can play in every tournament and automatically qualifies to play in all 4 rounds i.e. there is no cut

Courses.

The course being used each week will be posted on the "schedule" page and the "this week" page. A USPGA Tour course rendition will be used, If such a course is of poor quality a different course will be used. If a USPGA Tour course rendition is not available then either a fictional rendition of a course, or a real rendition of a European/World course will be used. There will be no blank weeks on this account.

GBC courses (denoted by a file suffix of .course) will be used as often as possible.

A good number of gaps will be left in the Tournament schedule to allow newly released courses to be played. An indication of this type of choice would be if the course name was displayed as "TBA".

Playing conditions.

Real weather conditions will be used each week to create playing conditions as near to reality as possible, within the bounds of the choices GBC allows in this area.

Prize money.

The real prize money total for the current week's real tournament will be used when calculating the tournament's finishing placings.

Handicaps.

A new system is under development for the 2004 season - more details to follow.

Tour rules.

Player registration.

All players must register with the Tour prior to competing. A player ID# will be allocated by the Tour. Each player may have only one ID on the Tour.

Each player must have a single unique, working e-mail address.

Player integrity.

Any player who cheats in any way or provides false information will be summarily dismissed from the Tour without any right of appeal.

Any player who does not conform to the Tour rules in connection with scoring may ahve their scores disqualified.

Rounds and scoring.

All tournaments are played from Thursday to Sunday each week.

The deadline for scores to be received at the GBO Admin. is midnight Sunday USEST or USEDT whichever applies at the time. Therefore plaease allow time for mail delivery and the speed of the Internet.

Scores must be reported via e-mail using the addresses provided which can be found at the round reporter page.

Although players can complete as many rounds as he/she wishes only one score for each round can be submitted to be posted on the leaderboards. The act of submitting a score to the GBO Admin. will, in itself define that score as the one that the player wishes to be posted to the leaderboards. Any score submitted subsequently will not be accepted.

When a round score is submitted the .game file which is automatically produced by the players' system must be attached to the relevant e-mail.

Scores for different rounds must be in seperate files although more than one file can be attached to an e-mail. Zip files are not acceptable and will be ignored.

Scores will not be acceptable :-

if the published playing conditions have not been used. In this event players will not be able to play incorrect rounds again.
if they are received after the Sunday deadline.
if any other Tour rules have not been adhered to.
if a round has been saved and re-started.
if mulligans or gimmes are used.

Method of play.

Two and three click play is allowed but use of the mousemeter is not allowed.
all meter speeds may be used.

Minimum strokes per hole must be set to at least 25 strokes.

Your computer system...

must be set to show your correct current time and date.

Submitting scores.

Go to the round reporter page and follow the instructions there.

Please remember to attach the .game file and DO NOT zip the files.

For your peace of mind the e-mail addresses you are asked to use send mails to different servers, so if one acts up the other one should still be safe.

About the backup.game file.

This file contains information about the round you have played which enables GBO Admin. to verify that the round has been played in accordance with rules and the playing conditions. No other file is acceptable for this purpose.

You can ensure that this file is created automatically by the GBC game on your system by following these steps :-

1. From the main menu in the game go to " preferences".

2. Choose the "advanced" tab.

3. Look for "auto backup" and check/tick the box next to it as per the screenshot below.

Re-naming the backup.game file.

Every time you start a new round, even if you only play one shot, the backup.game file re-creates itself, automatically overwriting the previous version. Therefore, if you forget to submit the backup.game file after completing your previous round then you've lost it and you will have to replay the round again.

To safeguard your scores and to make life easier for the GBO Admin you need to re-name your backup.game files before you start your next round. Give each file a unique name and you will not overwrite them.

The format should be as follows :-

player number-player name-course name-round number-score in numbers (not against par). Here's an example.

GBO-001-tigertbox-pebble beach-r1-64.

TWO IMPORTANT ISSUES TO REMEMBER.

1. Do not lose the file extension of .game or else the file cannot be opened for verification purposes.

2. Do not use the # symbol as this is known to corrupt the file in some instances.

Recording your rounds.

A completed round can be saved and imported into other players' systems so they can play against your rounds and you can play against other peoples rounds. During each tournament recorded rounds are posted on the message board. You can download them from there onto your system.

The file produced has a file extension of .round.

To set your system to give you the opportunity to save after every round played go to "preferences" and select the "general" tab. Check/tick the record golfer rounds box as shown below.

The Number One Club.

Any hotshot submitted to the Tour which is an Ace will automatically admit the player to The Number One Club - open only to the small number of players who hit one of those elusive perfections.

As the season progresses a table is displayed and the player with the most aces becomes "Mr Ace" and a "player of the year"

Pro Am competition.

At the beginning of each season a random draw is made to determine which Am will play with which Pro.

The pairings stay the same fror the complete season.

If either one of the pairings fail to submit a score then the team does not earn any money.

Only the first two rounds scores by the Pros scores count so that the cut does not intervene and cause a team to have no score. All 4 rounds of the Ams handicap scores will count.

Flights competition.

Based on current handicaps, players have been grouped into three Flights A, B and C.

Flight A will consist of players with a handicap of 14 and lower. Flight B will comprise players with a handicap between 9 and 13. Flight C will include players with a handicap of 8 or higher. The composition of each Flight will be dynamic as handicaps change. So it is possible to be placed in Flight C for one competition and be in Flight B next time if your handicap has improved sufficiently. A major incentive for player skill development.

Once each month players in the same Flight will be playing in scratch competition against each other in the usual stroke play mode. To clarify this, Flight competition is played on a scratch basis but it is the players' handicaps which creates the Flight segregation. No extra rounds are needed - your usual 4 rounds of stroke play will be used for the Flights competition.

A winner in each Flight will be produced. In this way the lesser gifted players will have no direct competition against the top players and consequently will have greater opportunities for wins and higher placings against their peers with appropriately higher levels of prize money and improved stats.

Prize money in the Flights will vary because as you would expect, a winner in Flight A should receive more than a winner in a lower Flight. Flight A prize money will be pretty much as in the past. Flight B prize money will be a little less and Flight C prize money will be a little less than is up for grabs in Flight B.

A seperate leaderboard will be produced for each Flight BUT the prize money earned WILL NOT be kept seperate , rather it will be added in to the overall total scratch earnings. Players who do well in the B and C Flights will be able to move up the overall scratch standings much better than has been the case previously. This reflects the incentive mentioned above.

As the player reservoir is being split into three the success of this Flight system will be helped by having a good turnout in Flights week so that each leaderboard has a decent number of players. However, if turnout is low then only 2 Flights might be used.

Although Flights are a SCRATCH only type of play, in the same week as the Flights competitions the usual handicap competition will take place with its own leaderboard and prize money as usual.

GBO handicap system.

The GBO offers a handicap system which mirrors closely the USGA and R&A handicap sytem.

A player's handicap will be determined by averaging the best 10 out of their last 20 rounds. In cases where a player has played less than 20 rounds, the average will be taken using the number of rounds specified by the USGA.

A player new to the GBO will have no posted scores so will not be eligible for handicap play in their first tournament. However, a handicap will be calculated and made active for all subsequent tournaments.

At the beginning of a new season active GBO players will have their handicap carried foward from the previous season.

Players returning from a long spell of inactivity will not have a handicap immediately as their lack of results will have made any handicap dormant. However, like the new player only one full tournament need be played to obtain a new handicap