Practical guides from GolfTracker.ai for the people who actually run charity and corporate golf tournaments. Every guide below is written for organizers planning a real event: what to lock down first, what each piece costs, how to price and sell sponsorships, which formats keep a mixed-ability field moving, and how the day itself runs from check-in through the awards. Most are worth reading start to finish before you commit to a date, then keeping open as checklists while you plan. If this is your first event, begin with the seven-step guide to running a charity golf tournament and the cost breakdown, which together tell you what you are signing up for financially. If the date and the course are already booked, the sponsorship and format guides are the ones that change the outcome: sponsorship is where the money is actually made, and the format decides whether a field of mixed abilities finishes on time and enjoys the day.
Set up golf bets in one sentence. Bogey builds the round with Nassau, skins, match play and Wolf, tracks the money hole by hole, and tells you who owes what. .
Golf tournament software compared: pricing, live scoring, GPS yardage, Apple Watch and Wear OS, and sponsors across GolfTracker and five rivals. .
GolfTracker's free Apple Watch app shows front, middle and back yardage, measures your drive and club distances, and keeps score with your phone in the bag. .
How to score skins with carryovers, the three Nassau bets and match play, net it into one number per player, and keep a scorecard honest. .
Every step to launch a golf tournament on GolfTracker, start to finish — branding, course, pricing, sponsors, scoring and event day, all in one place. .
Send a branded email blast to your registrants, players or sponsors — with your site's own colors and reply-to, and a built-in test-send safety net. .
Build your tee-time groups, confirm your course's par by hole, and your live public leaderboard is ready before anyone tees off. .
Search any golfer, scan a QR code, or take walk-up money at the registration table — here's what's already built in for event day. .
Your registration page only opens once real pricing is set. Here's the two-minute check to confirm golfers can actually sign up. .
Build a course template, then layer on a map image and GPS-accurate yardage to every green — GolfTracker's signature interactive course map. .
Once your tiers exist, add the sponsors themselves — name, logo, tier, and a public micro-page GolfTracker builds automatically. .
Define your sponsorship packages — Gold, Silver, hole sponsor, whatever you want to call them — before you sell a single one. .
Public contact info and which pages your site shows — the last of the five setup steps, and the one that finishes your public site. .
Single, pair and foursome pricing — all three are required before your registration page opens to the public, and here's exactly why. .
Paste your course's website and GolfTracker reads its scorecard automatically — holes, par and layout, filled in for you. .
GolfTracker starts you with a template tournament — name it, date it, and set your venue, and your public site updates immediately. .
The classic par-3 and designated-hole pots. Simple to run, universally understood, and the two contests that always end up on the trip board. .
Greenies, sandies, barkies, polies — the little pots for great and lucky shots. The side game that rewards the one good thing that happened to you all day. .
Three-putt and you are holding the snake, and the pot, until somebody else does. The cheapest game to run and the most fun to watch on the last green. .
First on, closest once on, first in. Three points on every hole, handicap-proof and genuinely kind to the worst player in the group. .
Team scores pair into two-digit numbers and you play the difference. Big swings, bigger comebacks — and the one game where a 9 can cost real money. .
A rotating captain picks a partner after the tee shots — or goes it alone for triple. The best four-player game in golf, and the one with the most decisions in it. .
Three bets in one: front nine, back nine, and the overall eighteen. Add presses and a comfortable round can get expensive very quickly. .
Win the hole outright, win the skin — and every tie stacks the pot onto the next one. The side game that makes the 17th worth more than the first nine. .
Your best score on each hole across every round, combined into one dream card. The board that gives everybody one thing to be proud of by Sunday. .
Day one scramble, day two four-ball, day three singles: three games, one trip leaderboard. The hardest thing to do on a spreadsheet, and the whole point of a trip. .
Points against your handicap. Rewards aggression, forgives disasters, and gets your group round in noticeably less time. .
Handicaps applied hole by hole using the stroke index, so the 18 and the 4 are both still in it on Sunday. The board that decides most trips. .
Total strokes, no help, no adjustments. The purist's board and the one the trip champion's name goes on. .
Head-to-head by holes, any pairing size, closed out the moment it is mathematically over. The backbone of every cup trip ever run. .
Points per hole, added across the team. A blow-up costs you one hole instead of the round — which is why it is the format that keeps a slow starter in the weekend. .
Own ball all the way, team's best score counts each hole. The simplest team format there is — no special rules, no alternating, nothing to explain on the first tee. .
Best drive, then everyone plays their own ball in. Half scramble, half real golf — and the format most trips settle on once they have tried both. .
Everyone hits, you take the best ball, everyone plays again from there. The great equalizer — and the only format where a 28 handicap can genuinely carry a hole. .
One against one, scored by holes rather than strokes. The Sunday session that decides most cup trips — and the format where being nine over par can still win. .
One ball per side, partners alternating every shot: the most pressure per swing, and the format whose rules have to be agreed in advance. .
Two against two, everyone plays their own ball, the better score of each pair counts. It is match play, and the friendliest team format for mixed abilities. .
A field-tested playbook for the person who actually organizes the golf trip: deposits, money collection, tee times, formats and the trip-long leaderboard. .
The rules, the payouts and the etiquette for skins, Nassau, wolf, Vegas and the junk games, plus how to keep the books straight on a multi-round trip. .
Session-by-session Ryder Cup setups for 8, 12 and 16 players — points math that keeps the cup alive to Sunday, pairing rules, handicap allowances and tiebreakers. .
The complete menu of golf trip formats — team games, individual boards, and how to combine them across a 2–4 round weekend so every player is still in it on Sunday. .
GolfTracker came out of the Arizona Golf Classic: 61 sponsors, 216+ golfers, and the spreadsheet that finally broke. The origin story, with the real numbers. .
A practical seven-step guide to running a charity golf tournament: setting a goal, booking a course, sponsors, registration, day-of logistics, and follow-up. .
A plain-English cost breakdown: course and cart fees, food, prizes, marketing, software, plus the hidden platform take-rates that eat your fundraising. .
The real sponsorship deck from the Arizona Golf Classic: 18 tiers, published prices, 61 sponsors sold — and why 32 of them bought the cheapest tier on the board. .
Golf tournament formats in plain English: scramble, best ball, shamble, Stableford and stroke play, with a quick guide to picking one for your event. .
Build your sponsor list from your existing network, tier the ask around visibility and mission, and close with a recap that turns a one-time check into a renewal. .
Upload your logo and GolfTracker builds your whole site's color scheme from it — or set your own colors and tagline in under two minutes.
GolfTracker.ai is the software behind these events: registration and payments, sponsor management, QR check-in, live scoring and leaderboards, and a branded event website for each tournament.