Today we updated GolfLeagueGenius.com with a number of new features, which you will see when you next sign in. We decided to focus on a large number of usability issues and small enhancements in this release, plus a couple of major enhancements. In fact, we implemented over 160 specific items, most focused on improved usability, minor enhancements, and a number of fixes for minor bugs. Obviously, we are not going to review all 160 items here, but I do want to highlight a few of the more significant items.
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​ New Spreadsheet Upload and Scheduling Options
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Our league customers often have special events such as Interclubs, and GolfLeagueGenius.com is more and more being used at clubs for outings and events like member/guests. We've seen that for these sorts of events, the organizer typically collects all of the player information on a spreadsheet, and then uploads that to GLG. So far, so good. Then the organizer adds players to the spreadsheet. As we work today, we would reject that spreadsheet because there is already a player roster. We've changed the process so that you can now upload a spreadsheet multiple times. If a player roster already exists, we will warn you that the player roster will be overwritten by the new spreadsheet.
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We have also seen that this spreadsheet often has a column that denotes how players should be placed in foursomes together, so we have added a scheduling option in create new pairings for you to take advantage of:

In this case, there was a column in the spreadsheet titled "foursome". The values could be foursome numbers (1, 2, etc.) or any other character string. We sort the players on this field and organize them intelligently into foursomes. You can have multiple fields like this if you are dealing with a multi-round event, where you want to specify pairings for multiple rounds. This feature makes managing the player roster and pairings for an event much more efficient.
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The last improvement that we have added to the spreadsheet upload is the ability to preview the effect of your spreadsheet before performing the changes. As soon as you have uploaded a new spreadsheet, we are going to analyze it and display a summary of the changes you are about to make. You can review them and approve or reject the changes. This is intended as a way to safeguard our users from mistakes.
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​ Displaying Points and Purse in Multi-Event Tournaments
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In a multi-event tournament, we do not show points and purse won until all events are complete. Some leagues would like more control over this as they want to "have a look" at the end of each event. We have added this capability by adding a button to show or hide purse/points:

If there are no events in progress for the series, you can choose to show the points and purse for the tournament for all events completed (e.g., where would things stand if we ended now). This applies only to multi-event tournaments. The button then becomes "Hide Points and Purse". This provides the fine grained control that some league managers desire.
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​ Print Player Analytics
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Our player analytics capability is very popular. Today, you can print a very nice one page summary of analytics for a player. For example, a number of you like to pass these out at a closing dinner. We have added a button to print analytics for all players. We generate one PDF that has an analytics page for each player. This can take several minutes, so don't worry if you experience a delay. We have also added the ability to print a high contrast black and white printout for those of you without color printers.
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​ Edit Pairings Page Improvements
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Edit pairings is one of the most frequently used functions on the site. We have made a number of improvements. First, there was some confusion about moving a block of foursomes within edit pairings. We now provide clear visual cues:

We now highlight the foursomes to be moved, and show with a finger pointer exactly where they will go. We have also made it easier to set up a shotgun with multiple foursomes on the same hole. We will now set A, B, etc. as soon as two foursomes are on the same hole. If you add players or blinds, you will now see a select box instead of a long and sometimes cumbersome list of players.
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​ Better Control of Season Statistics
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Many leagues really like the all-season statistics we present, but also have events that for whatever reason should not be included in these statistics. You can now control this with a checkbox found in the league profile for the event. From the Events menu, select "Edit League Profile for this Event" and uncheck "Include event results in season statistics".
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​ Enhancement to User Scored Tournaments
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User scored tournaments are very popular for closest to pin and longest drive, for example. We have added the ability to have user scored tournaments by team:

If you select score by team, we will ask for team list name, and then show each team name in results. Enter team score and off you go.
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We have also made it much easier to fill in the ranks of players in User Scored Tournaments. As soon as you have entered the points or purse for your User Scored Tournament, click on "Recalculate Positions" and we will automatically fill in the positions for you by sorting the players based on purse and then points.

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As I mentioned earlier, we also made over 160 small improvements that you will see on the site. Virtually all of these originated with customers submitting requests or discussing issues with our Support team.

We have updated GolfLeagueGenius.com with a number of new features, which you will see when you next sign in. We have implemented numerous enhancements, usability improvements and bug fixes, as well as some major new features. I will highlight only the major new features here.
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​ Player Status
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We added the ability for you to set a status for players who do not complete an event. This is very important for our professional associations, but also often requested by our social league customers. From scorecard entry, you can now set player status by clicking on a player name:

The effect of status depends on the type of tournament. For tournaments that are not player vs. flight or field, scores will be counted where they exist (e.g, first 12 holes) if status is WD, NC or DNF. If player is DQ'd, no scores will be used in any circumstance. If tournament is player vs. flight or field, then no scores are considered at all. Status will be displayed on all leaderboards.
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​ Scoring Status Updated Automatically
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For those of you using real-time score entry with iPhones or Androids, you will be able to see the exact state of foursomes on the course at all times:

The number of holes completed on this page is now updated every few seconds. Hence, you can easily see where everyone is on the course, and as players come off the course you will see at a glance where there are scores missing.
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​ Comments for User Scored Tournaments
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We have added an optional comments field for user score tournaments. When you adjust leaderboard to enter details for user scored tournaments, there is now an optional details column, where you can enter text. This then displays on the leaderboard. Additionally, there is now an ability to cancel an adjusted score in user scored tournaments.

​ Export Leaderboard as Spreadsheet
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You can now export results to a spreadsheet. We create a tab for each tournament. As announced previously, we also have a command to export the event as a spreadsheet. In this case, we store pairings in the first tab and starting time details in the second tab.

​ Use of Information Icon
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We are starting to use a small information icon to make clear where you can get more information. Whenever you see the icon, you can hover over it to get more information. You will see this more and more on the site. Below is an example of displaying additional information on the leaderboard when there is a player status such as withdrew.

Printed Scorecard Improvements

Many of you commented that you did not care for the font we used to print scorecards. Ok, we changed it to a standard Arial font. We also made a number of other tweaks, including showing a player's quota when playing quota format:

Other Minor Enhancements

​ Real-Time Scoring
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The above scorecard is from the PGA Player of the Year Conference just held at Bandon Dunes. Golf Genius Software was an invited sponsor, and our system was used for scoring tournaments over all three days. The PGA professionals downloaded our app and used it for real-time scoring of skins games, foursome vs. field, an aggregate low gross and an aggregate net Stableford. They were able to see the status of all tournaments from their phones while on the course, and we had a scrolling TV leaderboard at the after-golf events. We received rave reviews from these professionals, and most agreed that we have the best real-time scoring in the industry. If you're not already using this feature, you really need to give it a try. You eliminate the need to enter all the scores as groups come off the course, and you can be displaying results in the bar/grill room/ locker room as the tournament is in progress and after wards. Our real-time scoring is a dramatic time saver for tournament administration, but more importantly, it adds tremendous fun to your events.

iPad app for GolfLeagueGenius.com
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We've launched an iPad app for GolfLeagueGenius.com and it is now available in the app store. The app provides for very rapid score entry, access to our real time leadeboard, photo upload to GolfLeagueGenius.com and a number of other functions. League managers can enter scores for all foursomes, but league members can only enter scores for their own foursome. You can access GolfLeagueGenius.com from any ipad browser, but our app provides a much better user experience, particularly for score entry - either at the end of a round or at scoring stations. Of course, the iPhone/Android apps for GolfLeagueGenius.com can also be used for hole-by-hole score entry. Unlike the phone apps, the ipad app displays an entire scorecard for entry:

Click on a foursome to "open up" the scorecard. When you click again on the foursome or click on another foursome, we save the data just entered.
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​ More Control for 9-Hole Leagues and Max Index/Max Course Handicap
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We have added the ability for the league manager to control how we stroke cards for 9 hole events if 9 hole rating/slope is available. We now provide the option to use the 9 hole rating/slope or to use the full 18 hole rating/slope to stroke the entire card and then use the appropriate 9 holes. Some leagues prefer to stroke the card for all 18 holes, but then post scores using the 9 hole rating/slope. We do not post 9 hole scores if there is not 9 hole rating/slope. If you want us to post a 9 hole score and you do not have a 9 hole rating/slope, then set the 9 hole rating to the 18 hole rating divided by two, and the 9 hole slope to the 18 hole slope.
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We now also allow you to set a maximum index and/or maximum course handicap for both 18 hole tournaments and 9 hole tournaments. These options are all under the Handicap Settings of the League Profile.

​ Most Improved Player
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We have added an app to the member portal for most improved player. We calculate this using the USGA recommendation. This is (beginning index +12) / (ending index +12). The user can set the beginning date and end date. To use this, you need to add it to your member portal. Select new page from a section menu, then click on most improved player. We recommend this for all leagues. Here is what you will see:

​ Faster Score Entry on GolfLeagueGenius.com
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We have re-implemented the Enter Scores Page to make it much faster. When you click on a foursome, we "open up the scorecard" for score entry. When you click on the foursome again or click on a different foursome, we save the scores. We now also show the state of each scorecard: "all holes completed", "no holes completed" or x to y scores completed if there are scores but not the same number for each player.

​ New Tee Sheet Format
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We have added a new option to tee sheet formatting, so we now have the current "horizontal format" as well as a new "vertical format". This is set in tee time settings:
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​ Improved Performance in Tournament Scoring

You may have noticed a few months ago that tournament scoring got slower. This was necessary as we were busy rewriting major parts of our scoring "engine". Think of it as road work-arounds before major road construction :) We are now releasing that first part of this rewrite, and you will see significantly improved performance for stroke play tournaments, which account for about 60% of our usage. The remainder of the work will be completed in the next two months.

​ Other Features

We are approaching the one year anniversary for GolfLeagueGenius.com commercial use. We are grateful for all the wonderful suggestions on how to improve the product, and we are thrilled to see how our customers use GolfLeagueGenius.com. Thank you for your confidence in us, for your support and for your suggestions.

9 Hole Leagues
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We have many 9 hole leagues and have been working to provide complete and proper support for these leagues. In our July release, we provided support for front and back rating and slope for 18 hole courses, and explicit support for 9 hole courses. If you play a tournament on the front or back 9, and we have rating and slope for the 9 holes, then we use it. If there is only an 18 hole rating and slope, as is usually the case, then we "stroke the card" for 18 holes and strokes on each 9 fall where they may.
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With this release, we have added support for 9 hole indexes. Nine hole indexes are supported by GHIN, GolfNet and Handicap Server. If a 9 hole index is not explicitly provided and we need one to match to a 9 hole rating/slope, we compute it from the 18 hole index, as specified by the USGA. If you are playing a 9 hole tournament, and we have both a 9 hole index and a 9 hole rating/slope, we use both of these to compute course handicap for the 9 holes. If we have a 9 hole rating/slope but no 9 hole index, we compute a 9 hole index from the 18 hole index (divide by 2 and round to 10ths). If we do not have a 9 hole rating/slope, then we stroke the card for 18 holes. If you have us post scores to GHIN/GolfNet and/or Handicap Server, we will now post 9 hole scores if there is a 9 hole rating/slope for the course played.
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As most of our leagues are 18 hole leagues, the 9 hole index usage is controlled by the league profile handicap settings:

For those of you with18 hole leagues, just use the default setting of 18 hole index, and you will not see any references to 9 hole indexes. As you can see, we also support leagues where some players have 18 hole indexes and some have 9 hole indexes.
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​ Guest Play
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We have had numerous requests to support guest play in such a way that you do not have to add guests as players to your league. We are introducing guest support in this release. There is currently no charge for guest play. A guest is a player in a specific event. The same guest can be added for multiple events, and we trust that you will not abuse this capability :)
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Guest can be added by golfers when they respond to an event invitation or register via the member portal. Even after a member registers for an event, he or she can still add guests through the member portal:

Above is a screenshot of the member portal where a member has already registered for an event. Clicking on "Guests" brings up this page:

You can supply an Index service ID (if you are set up to use one) or enter a handicap index directly for a guest. Note that a member can enter multiple guests, and for each guest can indicate if the guest should be paired with the host member. This will make it very easy for league members to indicate if they are bringing guests. The league manager will be notified when a member registers guests. Additionally, a league manager can also enter guest data of behalf of a member. On the "Manage Event Player Roster" page, there is now a button to "Manage Guests". Clicking this button will bring the league manager to a page where guest info can be entered:

The manager can denote the host (or make herself the host) and indicate if the host and guest should be paired together. Once a guest is defined in an event, he or she can be added to divisions, flights, teams, etc. and treated like any member for the duration of this event. When a schedule is created, the hosts and guests will be paired together if so requested.
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With the new guest capability, league managers no longer need to add players who are simply guests in one or a few rounds.
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​ Simplification of Divisions, Flights and Teams
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We have been working for some time to simplify the management of divisions, flights and teams. Some of the new features were introduced last month and the final feature is being introduced with this release. Previously, divisions and team lists could only be created under the Golfers menu, and then appeared for every event. This created a lot of "clutter" when, for example, you just wanted to create special divisions or team lists to be used in one event. As of this release, you can create "All-Season" divisions, flights and teams under the Golfers menu, but you can also create event-level divisions, flights and teams. All-Season divisions (and the flights and team lists in these divisions) will be part of every event, but event-level divisions only exist for the event. Each division is labelled as All-Season or Event:

We think that these changes, along with the improvements we made in the July release, really simplify creating and managing divisions, flights and teams. We have also made some changes so that it is much faster to add multiple flights and teams. Additionally, we have also added guided tours to each of these pages. This guided tour will appear when you first access a page, but can be called up at any time by clicking on the "Guide Me" button on the top right of each page:

​ Other New Features
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- We have added some options to customize the team standings app on the member portal.
- You can now enter Stableford scores for just 9 or 18 holes if you do not want to enter hole-by-hole scores
- We now provide for an optional maximum course handicap in addition to maximum index. We first "trim" a player's index if it is above the maximum. We then compute course handicap and "trim" again if the player's course handicap is greater than the maximum course handicap.
- We have extended advanced formatting of scorecards to cases where there are four players on the card. In this case, we eliminate the marker's notes section so that we have room to print the logo and other optional information.
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​ Real-time scoring, real-time leaderboards and TV Displays
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Our real-time scoring has been very popular, so I'd like to review it here. First, we have had real-time score entry from our free phone apps for some time. This feature is useful even if you are not doing real-time leaderboards; if your players (or volunteers) enter scores as players are on the course, then the leaderboard can be calculated and displayed as soon as the last foursome enters the final hole scores. The real power of GolfLeagueGenius.com comes into play when you mark an event as "In Progress" from the Event menu. When you do that, we automatically recompute the leaderboard as new scores are entered or other changes are made. You can view real-time results from "Display Leaderboard" on the manager site, but more importantly, these real-time results can be accessed from the member portal or two urls - myleague.GolfLeagueGenius.com/lb and myleague.GolfLeagueGenius.com/tv - where "myleague" is the subdomain for your league, as it appears on your league profile. /lb shows a real-time leaderboad on a pc, ipad or iphone, and /tv show a rotating display on a pc or ipad. The real-time leaderboard shows current results for all tournaments in progress, and you can click on a player to see hole-by-hole detail. The TV display is ideal for group viewing in the clubhouse when connected to a large TV or projector, and it is also useful viewers who want to follow a tournament on their PC.
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We have added an important feature to the TV display in this release:
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Note that there is now a "TV Display" checkbox on the collage page. When you check TV Display for a collage page, the page will be in the "rotation" on the TV display - after all tournament result pages have been displayed, we then display all of the collage pages where TV Display has been checked. The cycle then repeats. This is great for displaying photos taken just moments ago on the course, or for creating content pages highlighting sponsors, upcoming events, etc. This is very powerful for creating a great event, and we encourage you to experiment. One thing we have learned is that players love to see action photos of themselves.

​Real-time Leaderboards:

You can turn on in progress scoring before there are any scores. When users view the leaderboard, they will see a "no scores yet" message. You can also tell your fans to go to the url for your portal followed by /lb or /tv to be taken directly to the real-time leaderboard or TV display for your in progress event. For example, pgaofontario.golfleaguegenius.com/lb.
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To summarize, there are three components to our real-time facilities: (1) our free mobile apps for entering scores, viewing the leaderboard and other pages on your member portal; (2) the TV display for projection and group viewing in a rotating, scrolling fashion; and (3) real-time leaderboards that are automatically refreshed on PC, ipads and phones. From phones, you can access the leaderboard via the free app, or by entering the url for your portal (with \lb appended) into the browser on your phone.
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Real time scoring and leaderboard display dramatically adds to the excitement of a golf event. I am confident that we now have the most advanced real-time scoring and display facilities in the industry. As a result, many of you are using GolfLeagueGenius.com for one and two-day tournaments. When you add the social capabilities like photos and league talk to real-time leaderboards, you can deliver a fantastic experience on and off the course.
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Get a sense of our display output by checking out this example of an in-progress leaderboard from a First Tee tournament last week:
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We should note that this First Tee tournament, held in South Dakota, was a tournament that probably only GolfLeagueGenius.com could easily score. There were three amateurs on a team for both days of the tournament, but a different pro was added to the team each day - so team makeup changed from day to day. The First Tee also had a local firm install very large LCD panels on the course to display real-time results as well as other information. To do this, they took a live feed of our TV display for the event, reformatted it, and routed it to their large displays, as shown below. Imagine the thrill of these young golfers walking the course and seeing their names on these large displays.

​Support for Nine Hole Courses and 9-hole Tournaments:
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Most recreational golfers have busy lives, and nine-hole leagues are becoming increasingly popular. While we have supported these leagues in the past, many of you have asked for improved support for 9-hole courses, 9-hole leagues and 9-hole indexes. Today, we are providing full support for 9-hole courses and front nine and back nine ratings and slopes. We will provide full support for 9-hole indexes in our August release.
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What does this all mean? First, for 18 hole courses, you can now OPTIONALLY enter front and back rating and slope:

If you do enter front nine/ back nine rating and slope, then these will be used to compute course handicap when you play a front 9 or back 9 tournament. If you do not provide this optional data, then we will compute course handicap for 9 hole matches as we do today -- stroke the entire card, and strokes fall as they fall. When we do use a front or back 9 rating and slope, we need a 9-hole index. If this is not supplied, then according to USGA guidelines, we use the 18-hole index, divide by two and round to tenths. You can also now create a course with just the front nine filled in. In this case, you must enter a front 9 rating and slope. All of these changes are reflected properly on printing scorecards and displaying results.
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In the coming August release, we will support 9-hole indexes. We will retrieve them from GHIN, GolfNet and Handicap Server, and we will post 9-hole scores to these services. We will also allow you to enter 9-hole indexes in player profiles, upload/download spreadsheets with 9-hole indexes, etc.
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​Simplification of Divisions, Flights and Teams:
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Thanks to many of you for your thoughtful feedback and suggestions about how to make managing divisions, flights and teams easier. We have been listening, and today are releasing the first of a set of changes designed to simplify things. Specifically, the following changes are in this release:

​Daily Digest:
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Many of you have asked that an email be sent to the league mangers when players register or unregister for events, or when there is a need to alert you to some sort of event. Effective today, we will generate a daily email, if warranted, and send it to league managers. You can control whether or not such emails are sent to you via your account profile, accessed by clicking "my account" on the top right of each page. We will alert you about the state of upcoming events, let you know who has registered or unregistered for events, alert you to new photo uploads and league talk comments, and old events that are still marked as in progress. As we introduce this, we have set all league managers to receive digests. If you do not want to receive these emails, just update your account profile. Please let us know what you think of this new feature.
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​More Information on Events for Calendar App:
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Many of you have asked for a way to show more information about an event on the calendar app on the member portal. We have implemented this feature and it is now available. On the tabular view of calendar, there is now a link for each event titled "More Info". Click on that and you will have our usual text editor window where you can add and format text. If there is more info for an event, there will be a "More info" link for the event on the calendar app:
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If a player clicks on that link, he or she will see the following popup:
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​More Skins Formats:
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Most leagues play skins because it's fun. With GolfLeagueGenius.com you can play skins with or without carry, with or without validation and with or without a max score for a skin. Several months ago, we added "Silk Skins"; this is a team skins format played by the Silk Group in Florida that we thought was worth sharing. Silk Skins is foursome vs. field. If two foursomes have a low score of 4, but one of the foursomes has more 4's than the other, then a skin is won. But one 3 in a foursome beats two 4's.
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We are now adding "Canadian Skins". In this variant of player vs. field, if multiple players have the low score, but just one of them has this score as a gross score, then that player wins. For example if there are two 4/net 3 scores and a 3/ net 3, the 3/ net 3 wins. But if there are two 3/net 3's, then there is no skin.
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​Other Features:
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We have also added several other features in this release:
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Now, when you see the "spinner" when, for example, you are creating a schedule or scoring a tournament, you will see a random "tip of the day" so that we can do a better job of making users aware of our features....There is now a round robin app for the portal that you can use to show round robin schedules if you create these sorts of schedules..... You will see a "Guide Me" button at the top of one of our pages, and we will be adding these to all pages during the next month. This provides step-by-step-instructions on how to navigate the page.... In tee sheet setup, you can now optionally select a player attribute, such as affiliation, that will appear below the player's name on the tee sheet. This is great for member/guests and other interclub events....We have changed the way we count balls in "best x of" tournaments. We now require that there be enough scores present. If you playing both balls of pair, and there is only a score for one of the players, we do not score the hole. Previously, we counted the one ball twice, but many of you suggested that this is unfair.

Printing Scorecards

In addition to selecting a tournament from the drop-down list, you can also select "User Defined" as shown above and then specify how you want the event scorecard stroked. We expect that most of you will want to select a tournament and have us stroke/dot the card based on that tournament. If you select a tournament from the selector, the radio boxes below the tournament selector will not appear.
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Scramble and Alt Shot Scorecards

​More informative Tournament Results
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​Round Robin Scheduling

​Peoria Handicapping

​Add Comments to League Photos

Above is a screenshot from a member portal photo page, with our calendar registration widget on the left - another great tool and timesaver.

More TV Display Options

More TV Display Options

We released a new update to GolfLeagueGenius.com today, which you will experience when you log in to our site.

One of our primary goals is to deliver to every golf league the capabilities you see in professional tournaments. Enhancements consistent with that goal released today include:
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Scheduling From Previous Rounds
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The ability to pair based on previous rounds is a tool we introduced last year. We have expanded on that with the ability to have cut lists and reverse horseshoe pairings:

You can base pairings on a past event or a series of events. You can include all players from a previous event (or players who played in ALL events in a series), or cut players based on gross or net score, or include just best x players (includes all players tied at x). If you don't know what reverse horseshoe scheduling is, then you don't need it (ok, go to our help screen and ask the Genius).
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Optional Scorecard Formats:
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As we announced last month, If you print one or two players per scorecard, we have room to do some neat things:

You can have marker's notes at top or bottom of the scorecard, an optional logo, complete control of the three text lines to the right of the logo, and the ability to print player affiliation on the card. From the Event menu, click print scorecards, then select one or two players per scorecard, then click advanced formatting, and format away. This is a very nice feature for end-of-season club championships, inter- clubs, etc.
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While we are on the subject of scorecards, we have improved our printing of tee data (yardage, par, hole handicaps). If all the players on a scorecard are on the same tee, and it is different from the "default tee", then we print the correct tee data for the players on the card. One small step for a man....
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We mentioned last month that we would be adding an event level spreadsheet download. You will see the first iteration of that on the right column of the event menu. Right now we have player roster and scorecard tabs; we will be adding tournament results in the near future.
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We have one other new feature, but I've saved the best for last. We have made a number of usability enhancements. While we believe that the truly unique things about GolfLeagueGenius.com (do we sound proud?) are the scheduler, the wide array of tournaments, the member portal and our (free) smartphone apps, we are fully aware that one of the big hassles in managing a league is figuring out who is playing next Thursday. We have always provided the ability to gather this information from invitation emails and the registration applet on the portal. Additionally, you as league manager can move players to confirmed or not playing. We have added two features to make this all a bit more bullet-proof.
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1. If a player responds to an email invitation or responds via the portal, they show up in manage event player roster with an * next to their name, the * indicating that the player explicitly responded. Let's say that you as a manager then move them from confirmed to not playing. The * is gone, and you no longer know that the player's original intent was to play. We have seen managers inadvertently click check all confirmed players and move to not playing. This is a problem because we lost the players' intentions. Now, we remember this and there will be a "revert" link next to players that had stated an intent but were then moved by a manager. Click revert to move them back.
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2. A manager mistakenly clicks manual foursome and creates a couple of foursomes manually. We update the player roster to reflect these manual foursomes, and now all of the original player responses are gone. Not good. Now, we remember this, and provide a button on manage player event roster to restore the roster to what it was before you entered drunken sailor mode.
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Continuing with the usability theme, we noticed that new users were getting confused when we issued multiple temporary passwords for portal confirmation. This occurred when you invited players to register for the portal and then immediately sent event invitations. To make it simple, or so we thought, we created a new temp password. That turned out to be confusing, so we now remind users of the original temp password, and do not change it.
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More on usability:
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-- When creating teams, you no longer need to name the team. If you do not provide a team name, we generate one from the names of two players lowest in alphabetical order. A time saver, particularly when creating 2 person teams.
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-- When sorting the event player roster on a field, we display the value of that field:

Please remember that we now support gender and affiliation for players.
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-- We now provide control of when banners and logos are displayed:

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We have added to our tournament repertoire. We now support player vs. all players in stroke play and pairs vs. all pairs in match play. This feature is limited to a field of 28 players or 28 pairs. It's s fun format. Think of pairs vs. all pairs. Let's say the field is 40 players, or 20 pairs. Each pair is in 19 matches. We rank based on number of matches won. This is a very popular format on GolfTripGenius.com, so we added it to GolfLeagueGenius.com.
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Dessert:
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We are releasing the first stage of our TV display capability. When we say "TV Display", we really mean full-screen slideshow format. Since this will typically be used in grill rooms with TVs, our marketing geniuses decided to call it "TV Display". Sign on or go your member portal, then to Tournament Results by Event. Choose an event, see the results, and click TV Display:

You can control the character size, the number of lines per frame and the duration of display. We then "chop" the results for tournaments into pages and rotate the pages in full screen mode. When you move the cursor away from this control, it will be hidden. When you move the cursor to the top of the screen, the control will reappear. Vary the font size and height (lines per screen) so that the results can be easily viewed from the back of the room, order a beer and wings, and enjoy. This feature will be dramatically improved over the next two months, but we want to get the benefit of your experience with different computers and displays. This is another step along the way of providing a highly professional experience to each and every golf league.

We released a new update to GolfLeagueGenius.com today, which you will experience when you log in to GolfLeagueGenius.com. Major items are these:
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​It’s Your Data
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From the Golfers Menu, you can download a spreadsheet with lots of useful data. There are separate tabs for Player standings, gross scores by date, net scores by date, handicap index by date and course handicap by date. There is one row for each member, and columns for all rounds played to date. A number of league managers like to do their own analysis of this data. Next month we plan to add a spreadsheet download on the Events menu; this will provide all tournament results plus hole-by-hole scorecards for all players. It’s your data – we’re just the custodians keeping your data warm, comfortable and well nourished.
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​Blind Draw Teams
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Many leagues like to play “Blind Draw” tournaments. Besides your real foursome, you are also in a blind draw foursome (or threesome or pair) and there are tournaments defined with the blind draw team. Tournaments with these sorts of “virtual teams” have always been possible with GolfLeagueGenius.com, but now we have automated the creation of blind draw teams. Click on Events/ Create/Edit Blind Draw Teams after you have your real pairings, and we will create blind draw teams where each foursome consists of players who are not together in their real foursomes (if this is possible – it’s “kinda” hard if there are only 3 foursomes playing). Just define tournaments using these blind draw teams, and you’re all set. Oftentimes, these blind draw teams are not even created until players are on the course. Try a best two balls of foursome “twofer” - one tournament using real foursomes and one using the virtual teams; if your foursome had a bad day on the course, maybe your blind draw team played well. Enter gross scores once and see all the results in just moments.
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​Team Captains
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One of the concerns golfers have about joining leagues is “but I can’t commit to playing every week, or even most weeks.” Some leagues have taken an innovative approach to this legitimate concern. Form teams of six or even 8 to 10 gofers, but each week only two or four golfers actually represent the team in the team competition. Other team members are welcome to play and participate in non-team competitions. You might have a better ball of partners vs. other teams tournament for season team points, but also low gross and low net tournaments for all players - those representing the team as well as all others.
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To make this a lot easier, we have added the ability for a league manager to appoint one or more team members as team captains. This is done in Golfers/ Manage Divisions/Flights/Teams. Navigate to a team and click "captain" to make one or more team members a captain:

Team captains have an orange border; you can "demote" a captain by clicking "uncaptain". Team captains then control who on their team is playing each week and who is representing the team each week. When a team captain logs in to the member portal, there will be a “Team Management” action on the tool icon. Click here, and then on a team list and a team captain can just check off who is playing and who is representing the team. This avoids a lot of unnecessary “chatter” between captains and the league manager.

A team captain can also easily send a message to the league manager. Note that this does not override the ability for players to register for events, but rather adds the ability for team captains to "speak up" for team members.
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​More Scorecard Options
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You can now add a more professional, tournament-like look to scorecards. If you choose to print scorecards with one or two players per scorecard, we now provide an advanced formatting option whereby you can add markers’ notes, player affiliation (e.g., home club or course), print a logo on the card, etc. It’s all very easy and adds a more professional look to scorecards. When you select advanced formatting after choosing 1 or 2 players per scorecard, you will see the following scorecard template:

Marker's notes can be on top or bottom of scorecard. The league logo or another logo can be printed. The three text fields to the right of the logo that can be used or left blank. To the right of player name, you can optionally print any text field in the player profile. We have added an affiliation field for home club. There is also an optional line at the bottom of the scorecard. The score card will look like this:

​Affiliation and Gender
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Speaking of affiliation, we’ve added fields to the player roster for Affiliation and Gender. You can enter these via spreadsheet upload or by editing any player in the player roster. We use affiliation on the new scorecard format described above. Actually, you can select any text field to be displayed next to player name on the scorecard.
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Gender will be initially set to have values of M and F – but you can expand the set of valid values to anything you want - MS for male senior, “Female Youth” etc. We now make it very easy to set tees based on the value of the gender field. In Set course an tee, if you select rows that have different values for gender, we will show gender in addition to columns and you can check a gender. Our first and foremost goal is to build great software that is easy to use, but right behind that is a goal to minimize the time that it takes to manage a golf league.
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​Performance Improvement to Score Leaderboard
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You should now spend a lot less time watching the spinner go ‘round and ‘round when you click Score and Display Leaderboard. We (that’s actually the “royal we” because all the work was done by one member of our development team – Nick Shelness) made some fairly substantial performance improvements to scoring tournaments.
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​Fractional Points and Purse
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A number of you have asked that that we support fractional points like 1.5 and purses such as $25.50. Ok. Done.
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​Making Registration and Login Easier
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Some of the most common support calls and problem reports at every web site is, "I can't login" or "my password doesn't work". We've taken three steps to alleviate this problem, as it's not fun for you and not fun for us. First, we have changed temporary passwords from xxx-xxxx to just xxxx. Fewer digits to screw-up. Secondly, we've added a "show password" checkbox on the login page. Users can check this box and they will then see the password as entered. There is nothing more frustrating than getting the "bad password" message when you cannot even see what you typed in. Thirdly, if you are in shift-lock (and probably don't know it), we show an up arrow icon in the password entry area, so that you will know that you have shift-lock on. We think (hope) that these three changes will dramatically reduce login problems.
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​Ease of Use and UI Enhancements
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In each release, we try to provide new function, deliver performance enhancements and implement ease of use and UI (user interface) improvements. In this release, we've made a number of UI enhancements:

League Handicaps

Posting scores to GHIN

College Scoring

9/18 Hole Scoring

Control Tournament Display Order

Handling % Handicap More Intelligently

Polls in League Talk

Additional Option in Pairings Based on Prior Event

Enhancement/Correction to League Standings

Improvements to Member Spreadsheet Upload

Improved Display of Navigation Bar in Member Portal

New Manage Divisions/ Teams/ Flights User Interface (UI, in geek speak).

New UI for Scheduling

First, from all of us at Golf Genius Software to all of you, we wish you the very best for a happy and healthy 2013. We appreciate your support and look forward to supporting your golf leagues in the coming seasons.
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We are moving to a four week release schedule, from our previous bi-weekly schedule. GolfLeagueGenius.com is now a very complete product and the stability of a less frequent release schedule is important. Nevertheless, we are constantly adding features based on customer requests and our own product roadmap. Today's release has a number of new features.
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1. It is now possible for members to send emails to other members through the player roster app on the member portal. This is an optional capability and it must be enabled by a league manager. By default, this feature will not be available to your golfers. To enable the feature, go to your member portal and click edit for the player roster app:

Then check the box "Allow Golfers to Send Emails From Player Roster":

If you do enable email (and why not :) ), the player roster will be displayed as follows:

If we have a player's email address, the checkbox on the left will be solid and checkable. If we do not have an email address, the box has a grey border and is not checkable. When the cursor is placed in such a checkbox, a message will appear indicating that there is no email address for this player.
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Note that you can select a division, click "Check All" and then click Email to send a note to all players in a division. When the Email button is clicked, a page will appear to enter subject line, message, etc. You can also check some or all players in one division, then go to a different division and check other players, and then send a message to selected players in both divisions.
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2. We have made some usability enhancements to "Edit Existing Pairings" for cases when you are working with multiple tees. We have implemented a new User Interface method that we will implement throughout the site. Have you ever been frustrated on our site or others that some button is disabled (i.e., not clickable) but you have no idea why? We are guilty as charged, and we are changing that. In Edit Pairings, when setting a course or tee, you must check one or more rows, and possibly check one or more columns. You will see that the button is disabled until you have selected at least one row. Until then, you will see a message appear (these messages in little boxes are called "tool tips") informing you that no row has been selected. If you have selected one or more rows, but have not selected one or more columns to specify a different tee, the button will be disabled, but the tool tip will inform you that no columns have been selected. We also now highlight the selected cells by making them orange, so it will be very, very clear which players are about to be impacted by a change of tee.
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3. On tee sheet Settings, we have add the ability to apply a % Handicap to the printed handicaps, and have made printing of player course handicaps optional:

Please be aware that setting a % handicap here (like 80%) controls what is printed on tee sheet, but does not control or override what you specify for various tournaments. If you were to set it to 80% here, but leave it as 100% on a tournament setup, the tournament will be scored at 100%. This is the case because you can have multiple tournaments in an event with different % handicap settings. For example, it would make perfect sense to have a low net player vs. field tournament at 100% and a foursome vs. field tournament at 80%.
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We have seen a number of leagues use the optional message feature to describe tournaments, special rules, lunch after golf, etc. This message will appear at the top of the tee sheet.
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4. We have removed the constraint that you can have a maximum of two events on one date. We have seen cases where leagues want to have two 9-hole events and a lunch or dinner on the same day, or three golf events on the same day where no player is in all three events (a womens event, a mens event, and a kids event). To implement this properly, what was Add/Remove Dates is now just Add Events. Everytime you click on a date where there is already more than one event, we warn you but allow you to add as many events on a date as you need. To remove events, use Tabular View of Calendar: Select one or more events, set action to "Remove Selected Events" and press go. Speaking of Tabular View of Events, please note that you can change the name of any event. Simply click on an event name ("Event 27"), enter a new name, and press return. We update the database every time you press Enter. This is particularly important when you have multiple events on the same date - otherwise how can one know that Event 21 is lunch and Event 20 is golf :).
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5. We have made some usability improvements to managing teams and to uploading spreadsheets. We have also reorganized the Events menu a bit but not changed the basic flow of organizing a league event: Open registration, lock down who is playing, create the pairings, edit the pairings (including setting course/tee/shotgun/tee times), create tournaments, print scorecards stroked as you desire, enter gross scores, and calculate/display all results. When happy, release results to portal. And remember that you can simulate the leaderboard before entering scores so that you can verify that your tournaments are set up to do what you intend.
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