This release has many important features, particularly for clubs, tours, associations and communities that manage a number of leagues and events. We have three primary goals in this release. First, we continue to improve our print and download options. While many of our customers value our live scoring and TV leaderboards, it's clear that there is still a need for the classic materials printed for events.

Secondly, we want to integrate as simply as possible into customer's member web sites, and make it easy for your members to access all relevant league and event information from one or a few locations. Thirdly, it remains our goal to constantly improve on the "less work" commitment for golf professionals and league managers.
​
​ Scorecard Composer
​
We've completed the work on the scorecard composer in this release. Now, you have a great deal of control on how scorecards are formatted. When you print scorecards, you will interact with the following page:

You can specify 1, 2 or 0 lines at the top of scorecard for each half. We've introduced the notion of "placeholders". When you type a %, we show a list of variables such as flight name, course name, tee, etc. We then insert the proper value on each scorecard. If you have only one line, as on the right above, then we print it in a larger size. You can control which tees are shown and where they are positioned, and you can add and position additional lines, such as the "Best Ball Net" line by dragging the line and entering text. Logos can be added and positioned, and optional slashes can be included for score entry and Stableford/Quota points, for example. You can reference any tournament for the round, just as you do now, and we pick up, % handicap, off low, etc.
​
From the above, we generated the following scorecard:

Think about scorecards with client logos for outings or other special events. Please let us know what else you'd like to see.
​
​ Scoreboards
​
We are releasing our first version of scoreboards. The feedback we've received from PGA professionals is that you'd like to see scoreboards for your major multi-round events, such as member/guest invitationals.
​
Again, we have taken the approach of a "composer" so that you can specify the format you need:

These scoreboards are designed for printing on 24" and 42" plotters and will scale nicely for both formats. We realize that many of you have created your own scoreboards in a format that you have refined over the years, so you can also output the scoreboard to an Excel file, and then go to work on the spreadsheet. We will also provide the ability to output just the relevant data to a spreadsheet, so that you can mail/merge it into MS Publisher or other tools. So, we will be able to produce scoreboards in final PDF format for plotters, in pretty much final format as an .xls file, or create an .xls file of just the needed data for a multi-round tournament as an Invitational or any other form of tournament, where you just need player/team data. Stay tuned for even more print capability. Our plan to "bridge the gap" between today's print-intensive world and the Internet world of live scoring, live leaderboards and member event portals -- we do both.
​
​ Faster Round Robin Setup
​
We observed A LOT of 9-hole-match-round-robin-flights-of-6-teams invitationals. :) It was fun to watch, and we noted that setup was very quick until it came time to set course, tee and tee time for each round, particularly with players on different tees. We've addressed that, so now I think we can take you from spreadsheet to completed tee sheet in less that 10 minutes. As part of the create round robin process, you will now see this page:

Click on "Set Course & Tee" for a round, and you will check off a set of flights and specify first tee time and interval, or shotgun holes, base tee for flight and alternative tees. And so on. It's very quick and you will see on one page the entire layout. Of course, you can also go to edit pairings and make changes. We think it's pretty cool, and a direct response to suggestions from you.
​
One more item related to this sort of invitational: instead of showing holes won, lost, tied, we now show points won/lost per round, just as you do on your scoreboards:

​ New Customer Center
​
We have completely "refactored" (a techie term :) ) all of the things you do that do not deal with one league or event specifically, but with all of your leagues and events. On the top right of every page, you will now see "customer center". Click on that link and you will see a new menu:

From here, you can (1) access all leagues and events and create new ones, (2) manage your master roster, (3) manage assets that are used by all leagues and events (course information, banners and logos, a default league/event profile and a default event or league portal); (4) set up directories (see below) and (5) manage payments - your account with us, and the payment center to collect funds from others (if you use that feature). You can easily jump and forth from here to a league/event and from there back to this customer center.
​
​ Directories
​
We now have customers with 50 or 60 leagues, events and outings in a single season. How do you provide your members with access to the portals or results that are relevant to them - men's results for the men, ladies' results for the ladies, etc.? And how do you make these directories easily accessible from your club and community web site? We've made it really easy. From the customer center, you can create directories that match your web site - like men's golf, ladies golf, youth golf, etc. You simply check which of your leagues/events should appear in this directory - and when you create a new league/event you can indicate which directories (possibly more than one) should include this new league/event. There is also a tab for you to specify how you wish to share this directory; you can copy a URL which you can link to from a page on your site (e.g., men's golf) or you can get the html to embed the directory right into your site:

The edit tab is where you name the directory and indicate which leagues/events are to be in this directory. The share tab above is where you get the info you need to access the directory. Once you do that, this is what your members will see:

The really nice thing about this approach is that you don't need to make any changes at all to your main web site when you add leagues/events. These directories will be updated as you specify and will always be current on your member web site. You can change what members see in the Men's Directory, for example, by adding and removing leagues/events easily on our site either in the customer center or when you create a new league or event.
​
For those of you who use our "open registration" feature where golfers can self-register for events, there is also a directory for these events. This is useful when you do not have an event registration system such as Foretees, MembersFirst, etc. Create your member/guests and member/members, specify open registration and they will all appear in one directory that you can easily link to from your member web site.
​
​ More Handicapping Options
​
For some events, you may want to use lowest handicap index in the past 12 months, past three months, etc. This data is provided by GHIN, so if you are using GHIN, you have some more options for what type of index we retrieve:
​

You can retrieve current index (as we do today), trend index or low index for past 3, 6, or 12 months. This is used by some clubs for major events.
​
​ More Scheduling Options
​
We continue to implement more options for creating tee sheets. We've always provided the ability to create pairing by individual index (first foursome has 4 lowest HC player, etc.), and now we've added the same capability for two person teams:

We've also added more options for naming teams from player names, as you can see to the right above. For two players we use first and last names. For more than 2 players, we use just last names.
​
Recently, we also provided better tools for working with teams when constructing the foursomes manually:

If you select 2 person teams, we show the team names and you can click to select. If the team size is greater than 2 players, then we show all teams players, but within each team. Let's say you have a youth golf event and you want to pair the two low HC players from team A with the two low HC players from team B. Here is a very quick and easy way to do this.
​
-----------------------
​

As usual, we have made numerous "under the hood" improvements and many other small enhancements. Please continue to send us your enhancement requests. We will have some very interesting features coming out next month before the PGA Show, particularly for enhancing corporate and charity events. In some markets, there is a very competitive environment for booking outings, and we are committed to working with you to provide a best-in-class experience for your clients and their guests, making you more competitive in your geographic market.

Speaking of the PGA Show, please visit us at booth #2309. We will be demonstrating all of these exciting new features, and we'd love to say hello and catch up. We are deeply appreciative of your support and advice. To the extent that our product is better than it was a year ago, it is because of you - and the great team that we have at Golf Genius Software, who strive every day to deliver on our brand promise of "Less work" for PGA golf professionals and league managers, more fun for your golfers, and more revenue for your club, association or community.

This is an important release with a number of important new features. Please review carefully, as it has been loaded and you will access it when you next sign in.
​
​ Handicap Analysis
​
"Your handicap for Rosend/Gleason is wrong. You have a 12, should be an 11". Why do you think it should be 11? "Because our other system says 11". War of the handicaps - who'd a thunk it? The only way to resolve these legitimate questions is to demonstrate exactly how we got to a 12. In this release, we complete the handicap analysis feature introduced in our last release. For any tournament you have defined (other than after-the-round handicapping in Callaway and Peoria), you can click on "Handicap Analysis" in the Round menu, click on any tournament, then click on any playing entity. Here is an example of the handicap calculation for alternate shot match play:

Look complicated? Indeed it is, which is why it needs to be decomposed step by step. This will be very useful when players challenge the handicap assigned to them. We've also added the capability to override the USGA calculation. It's your tournament and if you want the handicap to be 11, just click on "Adjust Course Handicap" and change the HC to 11. That will change the handicap for just this tournament, and not change the players' indexes.
​
As a math geek having observed thousands of tournaments, I really believe that the USGA handicapping system works and works really well. It is what allows players of different skill levels to compete and have fun. This is simply not the case in most other sports. The USGA has improved the system over several decades, and it works best when the rules are followed precisely. But at the end of the day, the customer calls the play.
​
​ Scorecard Composer
​
We've received many requests for more flexibility in creating scorecards. After analyzing all of these requests, we found a few issues dominated:
​
- the ability to add lines anywhere on the card and to enter text in these lines (e.g., between 2nd and 3rd players, after 4th player, etc.);
- better control of which tees printed and where the tee info is placed on the card;
- the ability to control logo placement: as watermark, on scorecard but not watermark, no logo;
- the ability to show or not show a line for player and marker signature.
​
Most customers want to print scorecards 2-up on 8 1/2 by 11 stock, so there is only 4 1/4 inches per card, and customers want better control over how to use this space. This release contains our first pass at a scorecard composer. Now, when you go to "Print Scorecards" you will see two tabs; one tab is for selecting scorecards to be printed, and the other to specify the formatting:
​

The grey areas above and below the scorecard are what we call controls, and we will add additional controls as needed. When you click on the "Add Scoring Line" button or check a tee, we add this to the scorecard image. We provide the little "elevator bars" to the left so that you can move these objects up and down. When you add a tee that has the same pars/HC holes as a tee already on the card, we "merge it in" by just adding another yardage line. Here is a view of the resulting scorecard:
​

We think it is pretty intuitive, so please give it a try and send us comments. We are going to add the ability to save a format and call it up later, and the ability to pull in data such as flight name, team name, etc.
​
​ Portal Improvements
​
We've made two important changes to member portals. We know that these portals are used extensively, and managers often add pages to discuss rules, schedule of events, and provide all sorts of other content. Customers also create some pretty amazing collage pages, bringing in photos, cropping them, resizing them, moving them around, etc. In many cases, particularly with outings, a PDF or jpeg file already exists and just needs to uploaded. So, we have added an "image" page to the app list, in addition to text pages and collage pages. When you click on "new page" from the portal, at the bottom you will now see:
​

When you click on image, you can select a file to be uploaded - including a PDF file. If the PDF file has multiple pages, we will make each of the first five pages into a separate image page. We will re-size the image to fit best on the portal, and the length will not be restricted, as is the case with collage pages. Plus, if you check "Show on TV Display" we let you preview how the image will look on the TV display (i.e., we optimize for the portal and TV display separately). This is a great way to highlight sponsor content during outings.

We also realized that we were wasting a lot of space with the left "sidebar" on each page of the portal. We've eliminated that on all pages except where we need to show rounds open for registration and a few other messages. The event/league portal, whereby you can freely intermix system content (tee sheets, results, etc.) with user created content, is truly unique and it fun to see how our customers exploit this capability.
​
​ Open Registration
​
In most league and club events, the roster is "closed" in that the league manager or PGA Professional determines who is on the roster. However, some leagues want a method such that golfers and "sign up" for the league, and some clubs that do not have tee times, and therefore often time do not have a tee time system, need the ability for members to sign up for events. Additionally, many clubs and public courses host outings, and would like a way for golfers to register for these events. Hence, we are releasing our second version of open registration. We have a simple way to create a registration form that sets the minimum and maximum number of members and guests that can be registered. A "member" is someone in the master roster, and a "guest" is someone who is not in the master roster. Additional fields can be set for members and/or guests.
​
To use this facility, the first step is to edit the league or event profile, and check "enable open registration". This will add two links to the left hand side of the league or event menu: "Create/Edit Open Registration Form" and "Open/Close Registration". When you click on create/edit form, you will be taken to a page like this:
​

Specify the min and max members and guests (e.g.,1 member and 1 guest for a member/ guest; 0 member and 1 to 4 guests for a charity outing), the open and close dates for registration, and the fields to be included on the form. Any custom field can be used here. After you save the form it is accessible as a URL - it can be linked to from anywhere, and it can be a page on the event portal. It can also be embedded by "sharing" as with other portal apps. Note the elevator bars to the left of the custom fields; drag up and down to control the ordering of these fields on the actual form. Here is what a form might look like for an outing:
​

The screenshot above shows only the top of the page. There are sections for other golfers. We register the golfer submitting the form, so that he or she can return to edit the form if necessary. We will soon be integrating this with our payment system, so that golfers can register and pay at the same time. We also provide a directory of all events, so that a member can be directed to the directory and from there he or she can select events.
​
​ Pairings Based on Previous Results
​
As most of you know, we serve many markets - private clubs, public courses, professional associations, large golf events, individuals managing golf leagues, and individuals organizing group golf trips. At large events (think the BMW championship at Pinehurst) and Association events (PGA of Canada, PGA of Ontario), there is often a need to create pairings from previous round results and to show projected cut lists. We have found that "professional tournament" capabilities like this are also used by leagues and clubs for making their own events "more PGA tour like". In our previous support for pairings based on past results, we could only look at individual player results, either gross or net. We have enhanced this so that now pairings can be done based on previous tournament results, and the tournament can be a single round tournament or a multi-round tournament (a 3 day club championship where pairings for day three are based on cumulative 2-player team results in the first two rounds). You need only specify the tournament to drive the pairings:
​

We have also made it easier to access and edit the cut list criteria. You can access the cut list spec along with other controls at the top of the leaderboard:
​

Other Stuff
​
We've made it easier to get things done without the need to go to multiple pages. Now under "add players" on edit pairings and on "create manual foursomes", you will see a "New Golfer" button - you can add golfers without the need to go to the "Golfer / Add Players" menu.
​
Also, we have added options to the very popular player tip sheet. Instead of one sheet per player, you can select one player per foursome; you can also selectively print these tee sheets after you have made changes to pairings.
​
There are numerous other minor improvements as well as some very major "under the hood" changes to improve performance. While we have by far the widest array of tournament formats in the industry, we always get requests for new things. We will be implementing a generalized form of 6/6/6 whereby you will be able to select holes, and then select a format such as alt-shot, Chapman, scramble, best ball, both balls. We will also add an option to skins so that there are no strokes on par 3 holes. Please let us know what else you'd like to see implemented.

We published a new release of GolfLeagueGenius / GolfEventGenius early this morning. This release has a number of new features as well as bug fixes and UI (User Interface) enhancements. We've added a number of tools to help customers be more productive and get answers more quickly. Specifically, you may find our handicap analysis, our pre-play audit and division overlap tools to be very helpful.
​
​ Handicap Analysis
​
Why is John's course handicap +1 when his index is 3.1? On the Rounds menu, there is now a "Handicap Analysis" in the right hand column. Click on it and you will see the tournaments for this round (remember, course handicaps can vary by tournament). Click on a tournament and you will see settings that affect handicaps and a list of players. Click on a player to see a thorough explanation of how we went from index to course handicap:

At the moment, we do not provide handicap analysis for scramble and alternate shot tournaments. We will add these next month.
​
​ Pre-Play Audit
​
This is under the Rounds menu in the middle column. We strongly recommend that you click here after you think everything is set up. We run a number of checks and then display:
​

We check for consistency across the round. Shown here is an example where the round profile is different than the league or event profile. This may by what you want, or perhaps you updated the event profile but not the round profile.
​
​ Division Overlap Analysis
​
Many leagues have multiple divisions and players who compete in more than one division. It was time consuming to determine which players were in division A and B. We have added a "compare divisions" link to do this analysis. Go to Manage Divisions/Flights/Teams under either the Golfers menu or the Rounds menu, and if there are divisions besides the All Golfers Division, there will be a "compare divisions" button. You can select the divisions to be considered (can be more than two) and you will see an analysis like this:
​

Click on a division name in the column header and all players in that division rise to the top of the list. You can add or remove players from divisions right from this table.
​
We have made a number of enhancements to tournament processing:
​
​ In-Progress Quota Tournaments
​
A quota tournament is fun because you have a goal - your quota is 36 minus your course handicap. If your handicap is 17 strokes, your quota is 36 - 17 = 19. But if we are doing live scoring and you're on hole 10, how are you doing relative to your quota? We've devised a "trend" quota, if you will, which is like a pace of play marker - it's about where you should be on hole 10, as a function of how holes are handicapped. We had a member/member earlier this month that runs a 2-person and a 4-person quota at the same time. The in-progress quotas worked well and added to the fun/suspense.
​
​ Limiting Handicaps on Skins
​
Some leagues have a hard stop of 18 strokes for skins - no more than one stroke per hole. We have implemented this, but if you need this capability, send a note to our support group and we will note this for all leagues and events in your customer record. We will soon make this an option when creating a tournament.
​
​ ABCD with Keep Together Lists
​
You want ABCD pairings, and you want Joe and his guest to be in the same foursome. You don't realize it, but Joe and his guest are both B's, so the scheduler shows an error, and you get very frustrated. We loosened up a bit, and now allow any sort of "keep together" even if you are scheduling by AB or ABCD. We make it as "ABCD-like" as we can, given that one foursome will have 2 B's (and therefore one foursome will have two A's).
​
​ Improvements to Bracket Tournaments
​
Bracket tournaments have proven very popular, and we have responded to two requests. You can now have the round name or round date printed above or below the bracket diagram, so it is clear what the deadline is for each stage of the bracket. You can also edit an existing bracket tournament and turn on or turn off the option for a consolation match.
​
​ Point and Purse Summaries on the TV Display
​
By default, we now show point and purse summaries on the TV display. If you do not want them, just click reorder pages on the control, click on summary and uncheck visible.
​
​ Enhancements to Creating Manual Foursomes
​
Last month we added the ability to work with 2-person teams in creating foursomes. We have now added support for teams larger than 2. Select that option and we show each set of team players separately; you can choose two players from team A and two players from team C, for example. We have also added the ability for filter by division and flight within division.
​
​ Changes to Simulate Leaderboard
​
One of the real advantages of Golf Genius is that you can have many tournaments in a single round. This feature is widely used, which leads to a need to have a "sneak peak" at a sample leaderboard to make sure everything is set up properly. This was done with the simulate leaderboard feature on the Rounds menu. We have removed this, and added a "random scores" button to the Enter Scores page. We now "know" if scores are real scores or random scores and can act more intelligently. After you click "random scores" you will see this popup:
​

If you click "Test Leaderboard" we will run the leaderboard and display results. So, random scores followed by "Test Leaderboard" is the same as the old Simulate. But if you click "View and Edit Scores" you are free to change some of the scores. Perhaps you want to change some specific scores for a player on a different tee, for example. Thus, you can "customize your random scores", and then click "Display Leaderboard" from the Rounds menu to view results. If you then come back to Enter Scores, we know that you have random scores and not real scores, so we display:
​

You can now clear out the random scores and then enter real scores, run the leaderboard again (perhaps you changed a tournament definition), or make further changes to the random scores.
​
​ And More....
​
We have made several dozen other enhancements focused on ease of use and better presentation -- multiple font sizes on the alpha list.... cleaner formatting of apps on the portals.... inline editing of player in player roster so that sort order is maintained...ability to not show handicap holes on scorecards for a gross tournament... much better email tool for leagues with a large number of golfers... a PDF report after posting golfer scores to GHIN or other handicapping service... and many other user experience improvements.
​
We have also increased the capacity of our servers to meet an ever increasing workload from clubs and leagues.

We published a new release of GolfLeagueGenius / GolfEventGenius early this morning. This release has a number of major new features as well as bug fixes and UI (User Interface) enhancements.

Linked Tournaments

You're planning a 3 round cumulative low-net tournament. No problem, just use our multi-round tournament feature accessed from the Golfers menu. But what if the tournament is 18 holes of best ball, 18 holes of alt-shot and 18 holes of both balls? We have introduced "linked tournaments" to address this requirement. Simply create each tournament in the round where it is to be played, then go to Golfers/ create/edit multi-round tournaments and click "Add Linked Tournament". Check the tournaments to be included, add purse/points, and you're all set. This feature applied to team-based tournaments.
​

Set-up is just check the boxes:

Now, it looks like any other multi-round tournament:

Linked tournaments can be used for tournaments over multiple rounds, or tournaments within a round (9 holes better ball, 9 holes scramble). For linked tournaments over multiple rounds, set up the linked tournament from the golfers menu. To link multiple tournaments within a round, set up the linked tournament from the Rounds menu.
​

Master Roster
​

Today, when creating a new league or event we provide options to clone from an existing league or event (copying in all players), or to upload the roster from a spreadsheet. With this release, we are adding a capability to maintain a master roster (or club roster) at your "customer level", to update the master roster whenever you'd like, and to create new events/leagues from this master roster by filtering players from the master roster.

Above is an example of creating a new member/member from the club roster, and selecting all male members. Besides filters, you can select by clicking on members in the master roster, selecting groups, etc. You can now also store course info, logos and banners, and a default league/event profile that will be used whenever your create a league or event.
​

Edit Pairings
​

We have noticed that the most tedious aspect of setting up a multi-round event is setting course and tees. Flights 1, 3, 5 and 7 are on front white, but a few players are on gold, etc. We have moved to more of a point and click model.
​

Instead of checking rows and columns, you just need to identify regions of the tee sheet - click on Katz at top left, then move cursor over Tandrau, A, hold down the shift key and click. This will highlight rows 1 to 3. Do the same for Campbell and Pelton. Then click go.
​

Plus, we now check for things that look suspicious and inform you (e.g., John is on back, but starting hole is #3). Below is an example of placing golfers on back nine, but hole to a front 9 hole:

We have also "unhooked" the hole modifier (A, B) so that you are free to change it. If you prefer 1 and 1A to 1A and 1B, just override the modifiers we set. We have also added "swap pairs" on the left hand side in addition to swap players. Click on one player and the pair is highlighted. Click on another player and the pairs are swapped.
​

Enhancement to Manual Pairings
​

The above "swap pairs" is but one example of treating 2-person teams as "first class citizens". We also now do this in "create manual foursomes". Click on "Create Manual Foursomes by 2-Person Teams" and you see will the following:

We show the teams along with combined index, ordered by team index.
​

More Payment Options
​

For league play, you can now associate a payment with round registration. If your league is enabled for payments (no charge, just ask us to set it up), when you open registration for a round, you can optionally set a required payment. We can add the credit card processing fee to your entry fee or not, as you prefer. When players click to register for the event, they will be routed through payment processing. You can then retrieve the funds and have the balance transferred to your bank account, as you might do with Paypal or other payment systems. This applies mainly to our public and semi-private customers. Call us for a demo or to discuss further.
​

Rich Text Editor Improvements
​

We have upgraded the rich text editor we use, and added the ability for you to include images - which can be uploaded from your PC. This should solve some of the formatting problems experienced by a few customers.
​

​ Improvements to TV Leaderboard
​

Depending on the combination of computer/device and display, some customers experienced "overscanning" problems, which simply means that the left and right parts of the image are "clipped" and not viewable on the TV. Not life threatening, but a nuisance. We have solved this problem with a couple of additional controls on the TV leaderboard:

We have added a "Display Width" and "Top Margin" control. Simply move the sliders so that the content is fully viewable on your display. We have tested this extensively with regular PCs and Chromebooks, and with Chromecast, and it works fine in all cases. Even in events where you are not doing real-time scoring, it's a real bonus to show the rotating leaderboard after the round is over, outside on the terrace or in the Grill Room.
​

Single Sign on for Guests
​

Many customers wish to connect to our league and event portals from their web sites. Today, if a valid user id is not part of the url that accesses the portal, we ask for user initials. We have now added a guest option to the url.
​

This url will ask for user initials: golffgenius.com/ggid/[your league or event name]
​

and this one will not: golffgenius.com/ggid/[your league or event name]/guest
​

In the latter case, every user becomes "guest". This saves a step for your members.
​

New, Improved, Better Reports
​

We have enhanced many of the reporting tools available.
​

Alpha List: This is now a direct "pick" from the download/print center, and can be printed separately from the tee sheet. You control checkboxes, number of custom fields to print, landscape vs. portrait, etc. We can print up to 151 players per landscape page:
​

Divisions/ Flights/Teams Report: This has been completely rewritten to provide fine-grained control over what gets printed and over sort order. We show a list of all divisions, flights and team lists, and you simply check/uncheck to specify exactly what you need:
​

The above is a request to print only a list of flighted teams:
​

At each level (division, flight, etc.) you can specify sort order.
​

Round Robin Tee Sheet: The round robin app for the portal now has a variety of options for printing round robin tee sheets. These can be made available to players through the portal before the member/guest or other sort of event begins, and players can print these tee sheets when and as they wish:

After accessing the portal, a player can select his or her flight and print a complete flighted tee sheet. A summary tee sheet can also be printed that shows all flights in a couple of different formats. If your event is round robin sort of event, be sure to include the round robin tee sheet app on your portal. Simple "add page" and select the "round robin schedule" app.
​

Activity Log: Why is John shown as a confirmed player on Manage Player Roster but he is not on tee sheet? These and similar questions can be hard to answer (you created pairings, then opened registration again, then John clicked reply on the invitation email you sent two weeks ago). We now provide a log to expose all details related to manage player roster:

The log can be filtered to look at a specific player, so it is easy to track all actions related to a player, including when pairings were created, adds and deletes from edit pairings, etc. This will save everyone a lot of time.
​

Feedback Welcome

June and July is "Member / Guest" season and we observed numerous customers with the pretty standard "flights of 6 teams playing five 9-hole matches". These have gone very well, and players enjoy the real-time leaderboards, photography, etc. We have had a number of suggestions and will be implementing these over the next few months - one cart sign for all rounds that shows all matches for a team, scoreboard sheets for those who use large scoreboards, an integrated display of tournament results with the photo slide show, display of points won by round in addition to our display of holes and matches won/ lost / tied. Many thanks to New Albany, Patterson and Nashawtuc for suggestions on improving member/guest events.

We have posted a new release of GolfLeagueGenius / GolfEventGenius. This is a major release with a number of very important new features for both social leagues and Clubs, and I urge you to review this carefully. Our products are used by private clubs, semi-private clubs, public courses, professional associations, groups organizing their own leagues, and organized golf outings. What they have in common is a group of golfers playing one or more rounds of golf. We are constantly implementing features and functions useful to some or all these customer groups.
​
We realize that this is a long note; we have added a lot and you should at least glance through to see what applies to your environment.
​
​Bracket (Elimination) Tournaments
​
We have added extensive support for single player bracket tournaments, and will add support for two-person team bracket tournaments in a future release. We have provided for "season long" tournaments typical at clubs and for championship type tournaments where not all matches at a bracket level occur at one time. We create each round of the bracket based on previous round results, and the first round from a bracket specification:

The leaderboard can be shown in the traditional format or in bracket format. Bracket results can be printed in a variety of formats, including a poster format appropriate for printing to a plotter. Brackets can be printed left-to-right or right-to-left, and in poster format brackets can be shown in the traditional opposing view. While hole-by-hole scores can be entered, we make it very easy to simply enter match results (e.g., 3 & 2) as matches are completed. Below is an example of a bracket display. The number below player in the first round/column is player seed.
​

The TV display updates bracket results in real time if hole-by-hole scores are being entered , and each bracket is displayed on a page of the TV display. After the winner of each bracket if determined, we automatically create a championship bracket to properly display the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final matches. For the final/consolation matches, we also show scorecards being updated in real-time. This facility will be used for the PGA of Canada Championship in late June. This is a 64 player, four bracket match played over three days.
​
​Round Robin Enhancements
​
One of the most common and complex tournaments is round robin match play by flights in member/guests or invitationals (flights of six 2-person teams playing five 9-hole matches in round robin format). We announced this last month, and added a number of enhancements in this release. If teams have more than 2 members, we will automatically create multiple matches between teams. For example, if teams have 4 players, then we will generate two matches for each team in each round. The 4 players from team A will play the 4 players from team B in two separate matches.

​Half Shots in 9 Hole Matches
​
When playing a 9 hole match, we have always provided the ability to stroke a card using 9-hole rating and slope, or to stroke the 9 holes using the 18 hole rating and slope. For course handicaps that are not even, this results in one nine getting one more stroke than the other 9. Many clubs use a "half stroke" system, and we now support this. To use half strokes, you must first set this preference in the league or event profile:

If you select half strokes, we will use this method on 9 hole match play. On scorecards, we use an underbar (_) to show half stroke holes (overbar for + handicaps). If a player scores a 5 on a hole and has a half stroke, the net score is 4.5. This beats a gross 5 / net 5 - it breaks a tie. It does not beat a gross 5 / net 4.
​
​Improved (Much Faster) Photo Upload
​
We have dramatically improved photo upload to the photo gallery by allowing simultaneous upload of multiple photos.

You can now drag a group of files to the photo upload window, or select group of files and click open in the file manager to start an upload of a set of photos. Try it out and you will get the idea very quickly. If you are taking photos with a camera, just place the memory card from the camera in your computer slot or connect the camera to your computer, and you can quickly upload photos.
​
​Hole Location Sheets
​
We can now print hole location sheets. You can store green depth with each course:

You can then print hole location sheets from the print/download center under the round menu. Just enter +/- from center of green, and optionally left/right distance, and print.

For hole 1 above, the green depth is 28, the pin is 10 paces from front, so -4 from the middle of 14 paces, and 5 paces from let edge of green.
​
​Course Analytics
​
We have added a portal app to track average performance by day:

This is a great way to see how the course plays in various weather conditions, and how tees compare.
​
​Primary and Secondary Logos
​
You can now load and specify a primary logo and a secondary logo; the same logo can be both primary and secondary. Whenever we print two logos, such as on cart signs and the TV display, we will show the primary logo in the left position and the secondary logo in the right position. This is great for leagues that want to have special logos for some events, and for club outings, where you might want the club logo and the outing logo displayed. If you do have a primary and secondary logo, you can specify which one appears on the scorecard.
​
This is all managed from the logos and banners link. You can also "lock" a logo and banner to one or more rounds; whenever you display results for these rounds, will display the proper logo and banner.

The next two features represent major new initiatives for Golf Genius Software. The Open Registration feature will be useful to almost all customers. The payments system will be useful to semi-private and public course customers, and to Associations.
​
​Open Registration
​
Today, a manager creates a roster for a league or event by uploading a spreadsheet or adding players directly. There are leagues and events that are "open" - golfers can register for the event or league. This release contains our first component of "open registration". You can now easily create a web form that golfers can access to register for a league or event. When a person registers, they are added to the player roster. If you enable open registration on the League or Event profile, you will see two new links on the League or Event Menu: "Create/Edit Open Registration Form" and "Open Event (League) Registration.
​
The first new link allows you to tailor a web form to be used for registration. You can include fields for index, GHIN/Golfnet number, and any number of custom fields. Once the form is created and you open registration, the form can be accessed from any web page via the url prefix.golfgenius.com/register, where prefix is as you set it in the league or event profile:

After the form is created, it is always presented in the context of your member portal to minimize confusion about authenticity. Below is an example of a registration form:

In a future release, you will able to create a form to capture information about member and guest registration (member/member, member/guest, charity outing foursome signup, etc.). This is in no way meant to replace tee time/event systems, but rather to provide a basic capability for those currently on manual systems.
​
​Golf Genius Payment System - GG Payments
​
We are also releasing the first component of our payments system. This operates very much like Paypal, but is built with an alternative payment system called Stripe. In this release, a league or event manager can create invoices payable by members. The invoices can be mailed to members, with a button that will take the member to our payment processing system. Users can also simply go to golfgenius.com, click "Pay invoice", enter an invoice number, and again be routed to our payment processing system. As a manager, you can enter bank account information into our system just as you do with Paypal, and you can withdraw funds for paid invoices and have these funds in your bank account the next day.

​ Improved Support for Playing Front or Back 9 of an 18 hole Course
​
Oftentimes, some foursomes play the front and some play the back of an 18 hole course. Now in Edit Pairings, when you select an 18 hole course/tee, there is another selector to indicate all 18, front 9 or back 9:

When you print scorecards and wish to print an 18 hole card, we will grey out the nine not being played, and when you print a 9 hole scorecard, we will print the appropriate 9 for each foursome.
​
​ Improved Support for Round Robin Flighted Events
​
Many member guests and invitationals use a format of round robin match play by flight. For example, you have 10 flights of 6 two-person teams, and each team in a flight plays the other five teams in the flight in five 9-hole rounds. Points can be for match or for holes won, or both. We have supported this format for some time. Today, we are providing significant enhancements to this common event/league format:
​

We now support all of these requirements. It's rather amazing how many clubs and leagues use some variant of this format. It is also amazing how much time is spent by golf staffs and league managers setting up these formats. Today, starting with a spreadsheet of players, one can create round robin, flight based, seeded pairings and tee sheets in about 10 minutes. Less work, more fun - that's our motto.
​
​ Single Sign-On (SSO)
​
Many clubs and leagues have web sites and would like to link their golfgenius.com member portals to their main site. As long as your player roster has a field to identify members/players, then members can "pass through" from your website to the member portal. Typically, you will have a link or button on your site and the url "behind" that link will direct to your member portal that is part of golfgenius.com. For example, let's assume that the league player roster for a league has a custom field named member-id, and this field contains a member's ID at the Club or league. A url of
​

www.golfgenius.com/ggid/23ab45/member-id/Z090

will go to the member portal with a league GGID of 23ab45, look for the member with the value Z090 in the member-id field, and sign in that user. If there are multiple players with member-id Z090, then we will show a list of names, and the correct one can be selected (it is common for all family members to have the same member-id.
​
​ Player Tip Sheet
​
We've added a useful tool to create a player tip sheet and to optionally email to all golfers before the round. It has the GGID of the foursome for real-time score entry and is a good tool for old golfers like to me remember who the host's other three guests are :) The detail content on the card below is provided by the league/event manager:

​ Live Chat
​
We've added live chat so that we can answer more questions while you are on our site. We do not guarantee to have someone available 24/7, but it also provides a very quick way to ask a question. We answer almost all questions within an hour. You will find this at the bottom of every page:

​ Defining Flights by Custom Field
​
We have received a lot of positive feedback to creating teams and foursomes from a custom field in player roster (normally uploaded from a spreadsheet), so we have added the ability to create flights from a custom field. We will now add divisions by custom field.
​
​ Scorecard Improvements
​
We continually strive to provide more flexibility in creating scorecards. Recently, a few leagues mentioned that that dots on the scorecards were too small. We've increased the size by about two thirds. You can look toward a number of other improvements in scorecards in our next release.
​
​ Performance Improvements
​
We have invested a lot of time in performance improvements. Most of these are "behind the scenes", but you will see a few items in the web pages, such as manage round player roster when the total roster is greater than 60 players:

We have a new "tabbed" interface here, which provides for faster loading.
​
Stay tuned for bracket tournaments, open registration for leagues and events, payment processing and lots of other features requested by customers.​

Improvements to the User Registration Process
​
For many of you, we have eliminated the need to register each of your golfers with his or her own password. Managing IDs and passwords is truly one of the biggest hassles on the Web, and we have taken steps to minimize the need to do this.
​
In January, we introduced GGIDs - Golf Genius Ids. These are 6 character codes that identify a league or event, a round in a league or event, and every foursome in every round. If a golfer comes to GolfLeagueGenius.com or GolfEventGenius.com and signs in with any valid GGID for a league/event, he or she will be taken to the appropriate member portal. The GGID acts as a "league/event" password and provides access to private pages on the portal. A GGID does not allow use of the round registration app on the portal and does not allow editing of a user profile. For these two actions, users need a private password. As a manager, you can send invitations to register and set a private password to some or all of your golfers. Also, a golfer, once signed into the portal with a GGID, can request a permanent password via a command under the gearbox. If you do not use the round registration app, and you are OK with a league ID, then there is no need to register all users.
​
How do your golfers know a GGID with which to sign in? There is now a "Send GGID to golfers" action on the league/event menu. You can insert a message, and we will include the GGID. We create a GGID as two digits followed by two letters followed by two digits, but you can change this to whatever you'd like in the league/event profile:

If you wish to have golfers connect to the portal from your own club web site, for example, you need only have a link of the form www.golfgenius.com/ggid/

.
​
Golfers also do not need to be registered to make payments. The emails sent have the needed information in the link. When a golfer clicks on the pay button, he or she will be taken directly to credit card processing.
​
​ New Options for Advanced Balls
​
Many of you set up tournaments like "best gross of A and B player plus best net of C and D player. To do that when playing foursome vs. field, you use our advanced balls option when selecting balls. We have completely rewritten this and expanded the options. How about "A player at gross plus best net of B, C and D players on the front 9":

and best gross plus two best nets on the back:

OK, how cool is that? By the way, the second one means "find the combination of balls that leads to the lowest score" when a given ball is both the best gross and one of the two best nets.
​
​ Improvements to Match Play
​
You're playing flighted match play over 5 rounds, and some flights only have 5 teams instead of 6. You'd like the teams in these "short flights" to play against "old man par" in one round:

​ Support for Windows Phone
​
We will be announcing shortly that our Golf Genius mobile app is available for the Windows phone, and can downloaded now. This means that our mobile app is available for iPhone, iPad, Android and now Windows Phone. The app provides real-time score entry and display a real-time leaderboard for all tournaments being played.
​
​ Setup Wizard
​
We've added a wizard to assist in league and event setup. When you create a new league or event, you can choose to use the wizard or not. If you do, you can exit at any time and always come back:

​ Print Center
​
We have moved most of the actions for printing documents from the Round Menu to a new Print Center menu accessed from the Round menu:

We've added a very nice facility to print proximity markers, and we are quickly adding the other sorts of reports you need to run events.
​
​ Improvement to GHIN and Golfnet Handicap Index Retrieval
​
When we retrieve indexes from GHIN and Golfnet, we now check the last name as stored on GHIN/Golfnet to the last name in the player roster. If they are not the same (i.e., the GHIN number have may be for another golfer), we highlight this for further investigation. If someone provides a GHIN number that is incorrect, but still a valid GHIN number, we'll catch it and alert you.
​
​ Other Enhancements

Not bad for a month's work, I hope you will agree. We continue to forge ahead. We believe we have the most comprehensive product in the industry, and we continue to improve on it. Stay tuned and, by all means, tell us what you need.
​
We've had a truly tremendous response to the launch of GolfEventGenius from clubs and courses who plan to use our products for leagues, internal events like member/guests and member/members and outings. If you have been using out league product, you should take a hard look at our event product for your inter-clubs and invitationals. Visit golfgenius.com to learn more.

This is a very important release for Golf Genius Software. At the PGA Merchandise Show next week, we will announce GolfEventGenius, a product similar to GolfLeagueGenius.com but tailored for events such as one day outings and club events such as multi-round championships, member/guest tournaments, etc. Many of you have used GolfLeagueGenius.com for events of this sort, and working with you has enabled us to understand the subtle but important distinctions between leagues and events.
​
​ www.GolfLeagueGenius.com remains pretty much as it was, as you will see when you go there to sign in. We have launched a new site - www.GolfGenius.com, which highlights and provides links to GolfLeagueGenius.com (which you use), GolfTripGenius.com (which many of you use), and GolfEventGenius. Please visit golfgenius.com to get a sense of what we are doing. It is a major upgrade to our web presence.
​
As a customer, you will be able to create multiple leagues AND multiple events as the need arises. We have announced new pricing plans which you can see on our site. For most of you, your charges from Golf Genius Software will be about what they are now or slightly less.
​
Here are the actual changes you will see on GolfLeagueGenius.com.
​
​ Changes to user registration and passwords
​
Creating accounts and setting/remembering passwords is one of the most frustrating part of today's online web-based world. Most of our leagues register users and those users set passwords. This is so that we can authenticate them when they come to your league portal, so that they can access private pages, register for events, upload photos, engage in League Talk, and update their profiles. As you know, anyone can go to your league portal and view public pages.
​
When you next sign in, you will see this sign-in pop-up:

You can now sign-in with a user id/password or a GGID (Golf Genius ID). We assign a unique 6 character ID to each league, to each event in a league, and to each foursome. You are free to change the league GGID in the league profile and/or the Event GGID in the event profile. When users sign in to GolfLeagueGenius.com with any GGID for a league, they will be taken to your league portal. They will be able to access private pages, upload and download photos and use League Talk. They will not be able to use the event registration app or access the user profile. In the next release, members will be able to set a permanent password from the portal.
​
Your league members should continue to do what they do today - either enter email address and password, or go directly to your league portal. Shortly, you will no longer need to have users register and set passwords just to pay their GolfLeagueGenius.com fee. The email a user receives will have a button/link to pay directly.
​
This new GGID is also very important for our mobile apps. Each scorecard will now be printed with a GGID. Someone in the foursome can sign-in to the mobile app with the GGID, and they will be able to enter scores for just their foursome. Scorers or volunteers who sign-in with the event level GGID can enter scores for all players. Speaking of mobile apps, our Windows 8 app will be available very soon; we are in the final stages of testing.
​
We are working hard to eliminate the hassles in registering users, assigning passwords, etc. We've come a long way. While this is critical for a one day outing, it is also very beneficial for leagues.
​
​ New Match Play Features
​
We have made some significant changes to match play based on your feedback. Until today, you could set points for a match or by hole, but not both. We noticed that many of you set up two tournaments - one for match points and one for hole points. Now, you can set points and/purse for matches won/tied and holes won/tied. We have also enhanced the information displayed about such a tournament (this is a 9 hole match with 1/.5 points for the match and 1/.5 points for each hole won/tied):

We now clearly show how many holes have been won/tied in the current match and over all matches if this is a multi-round match play. One of the issues in match play is the possibility of ties and sudden death. Now, on adjust leaderboard, you can explicitly indicate won, lost, tied, and change AS (all square) to something like "won - 21 holes". We then assign the match points. Since many of these sorts of tournaments are flighted, we also added to "create round robin schedule" function the ability to do this by flight.
​
If you have existing leaderboards and you want to see results in this new format, you need to rescore the tournament.
​
​ Better Control of In Progress vs. Completed
​
The way we score a tournament depends on whether or not it is in progress or complete. If a tournament is complete, then players who have not played as many holes as others would be DNF (did not finish). If the tournament is in progress, then this is a normal state. You need to tell us when a tournament starts and when it is complete, and this is done on the event menu:

We have had in-progress and complete from the beginning of real-time scoring. We have added a "Not Started" state. If you click on not started after you mistakenly clicked in progress for a round, we clean up everything so that the leaderboard does not show rounds that were marked in progress by mistake. If you are not using real-time scoring, you can ignore these states. When you score the leaderboard, we move the state from in progress to complete.
​
​ TV Display Storyboard Editor
​
Our rotating TV display is very popular for use during events or in the grill room afterwards. It rotates through all tournament results, like you see with flights in an airport. One of the very cool things about this is the ability to add photo pages or other content pages (like sponsor messages) to the rotation. We now give you fine grained control on the ordering of these pages:

From the TV Display control, click on "Reorder Pages", then simply drag the page icons to your desired order. In settings for each icon, you can control the display time for each page relative to the display time for the tournament pages (e.g, you'd like the photo page to persist on the display for twice as long as the tournament results pages).
​
​ Limit Number of Entities on Leaderboard Results
​
We noticed in large events that there can be many pages of results displayed. No one really needs to watch 5 pages rotate just to see who came in dead last (sometimes called "DFL"). You can now control this for each tournament in tournament setup:

You can set the number of result lines (players, pairs, foursomes, teams) to be displayed on the TV leaderboard, results displayed in iframes on other sites, and on the league website. It is most useful for the TV leaderboard where you want to limit each tournament displayed to one or two pages, but we added the capability everywhere. Notice that you can also completely hide the results from the league website.
​
​ Improvements to Player Roster
​
We've made two important improvements to the player roster. First, you now have much better control on what is displayed, and the order of columns:
​

When you click on "Player Roster Settings" on the player roster page, you will see the above. You can then click away to control what is displayed and in what order. This is particularly useful for printing the roster. Just set the display as you like, then click "Print Roster". What you see is what you get.
​
When adding new players to the roster via the "Add Players" function, you can now very easily specify what divisions this player is to be in. There is now an area to check all the divisions a player should be in.
​
​ Estimating Points and Purse
​
On the tournament summary page, there is now a feature to estimate points and purse for all tournaments, so you can see the big picture of what is at stake. We say "estimate" because in some cases the purse and points awarded depends on how many golfers actually show up. Plus, is some cases such as "for each skin" or "for each birdie" it is not possible to estimate results.
​
​ More Scorecard Printing Formats
​
We noted how many "9 hole leagues" we have, so we added the ability to print a scorecard for just 9 holes in portrait format. That gives us the room to data for multiple tees if needed.

Note the GGID on the bottom right.
​
Many of you have special events in addition to your league play. You will find that GolfEventGenius makes setting up these events a snap. In our last release we announced the ability to schedule based on a foursome ID in a player spreadsheet. We added to that the ability to specify teams on the spreadsheet, also.
​
​ New and Improved Description of Features
​
If you visit www.GolfLeagueGenius.com and click on Features, you will now see a very complete description of our product capabilities. You should take the time to look through this - there are probably useful feature that you are not using.
​
​ Placing it all in Perspective
​
We are now in year 6 at Golf Genius Software and have a team of about 16 people. We've got a good balance of golfers, software developers and marketing/business folks. Check out our new About us page: http://www.golfleaguegenius.com/about-us. When i started the company in late 2008, I had a vision of products for trips, leagues and events - I just didn't realize that it would take five years to complete the build-out :). Virtually everything that is in GolfEventGenius is the result of working with our customers, and more importantly listening to you and "feeling your pain" at times. Thank you for your advice and at times, your patience. I am confident that you will find GolfEventGenius to be a great complement to GolfLeagueGenius.com. Our goal is very simple - to make every event like the U.S. Open. Why not - the technology is all here to make it possible and cost effective. It is a really great product and I know that many of you will "see your fingerprints" on it when you start to use it.