How to Run a Member Member Tournament Calcutta

Over the last several years, my country club has not had a Calcutta for the Member Member or Fall Classic ye there was a huge Calcutta for the Member Guest. This year, I took it over myself as I want to up the ante when it comes to bragging rights at my country club. There were a few things I had to consider when setting up and running this years Calcutta.

The first important part of a Calcutta is to determine the buy in cost and how it will be paid out. The fact that we don’t have a practice round nor a pairings or partner dinner before the event makes it hard to allow other golfers to bid or buy teams other than their own. For that reason, we only allowed teams to buy themselves and if a team went unsold they simply could not win money at the end. It also reduced the payout for that flight and the overall winner.

This is the setup I used for this years member-member Calcutta:

Total Buy In
$300
Flight Buy In Flight Winner
225 (.75 of $300) 900 (4 x 225)
Overall Winner Buy In Overall Winner Overall Runner Up
75 (.25 of $300) 2250 (.75 x 3000) 750 (.25 x 3000)

Basically, you pay $300 to get in which would win you a total of $900 if you won your flight and another $2250 if you won the whole thing. That is if all four teams in a flight bought in and all 40 teams out of the 10 flights bought in. Obviously, this is not going to happen, but that is the ideal situation. Once bought in, 75% of the 300 goes to the flight and 25% goes to the overall.

How many teams bought into the flight will determine the payout of the flight. If only two teams bought in the “winner” would get $450. If three teams bought in the “winner” would get $675. If all four teams buy in, the “winner” gets $900. The overall winning will get 75% of the total overall buy in which is $75 times the number of teams.

Running a Calcutta can get very complicated if you pay out Day 1 and Day 2 winners. That said, it does give some teams more incentive to play harder on Day 2 if they were blasted on Day 1 and have little chance to win their flight. That said, most flights are very evenly matched so it is hard for one team to completely dominate. There is usually something to play for on Day 2.

How does your country club run its Calcutta? Do you pay out daily winners? Do you pay out 1st, 2nd and 3rd place at the end? I would love to know how it works at your club or where you play golf.