Official Tradition Country Club Tour Rules,History and Information

Tradition Country Club Tour Information and Rules​

Section 1 - League Overview and History

Section 2 - TCCT Rules and Regulations

• General Rules
• Golf Simulation Concept

Section 3 - TCCT Membership Information

• Overview
• New Members Placements and Country Clubs Expansion/Deletion
• TCCT Country Club List

Section 4 - Affiliate Country Club Membership Information

• Overview
• Requirements and Expectations

Section 5 - The Tradition Cup

• Overview
• Participants
• Schedule
• Points System
• Pro/Am Status
• Handicap System
• Tie Breaker System
• Partial Round Completion Point System
• Important Links

Section 6 - The Tradition Cup - Match Play Information

• Overview
• Match Coordination
• Score Reporting Process

Section 7 - Other TCCT Information

• TCCT Online Country Club Daily Events
• Ryder Cup Style Events
• Other Member Sponsored Tournaments

League Overview and History​

The Spirit of the Game
Golf is played, for the most part, without the supervision of a referee or umpire. The game relies on the integrity of the individual to show consideration for other players and to abide by the Rules. All players should conduct themselves in a disciplined manner, demonstrating courtesy and sportsmanship at all times, irrespective of how competitive they may be. This is the spirit of the game of golf. ~ USGA Rulebook


Overview

Welcome to the Tradition Country Club Tour or TCCT, hosted by Tradition Sports Online (TSO). The TCCT will utilize Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14, by EA Sports, to create a Tradition Sports League which runs cross platform events for our Members, as well as sponsors The Tradition Cup. The Tradition Cup will provide a real PGA Tournament feel with an extremely deep field, by incorporating TCCT players along with other competing EA Online Country Clubs. The goal for The Tradition Cup is to bring as many of the top, most active, community based Tiger Woods 14 Country Clubs together for the largest online tour experience available on the web. With the new Online CC feature, we will be able to set up coordinated live tournaments within our clubs with the same exact conditions and settings, across platforms and CC’s.

Some of the other new features that will be brought to the Tour this year are:

• The use of the Online Country Club feature, which will allow for improved time flexibility, as players will now be able to put in their rounds at times that are convenient for them.
• For the 2012 Season we implemented a handicap system and Pro/AM Style tiers for The Tradition Cup, which will give every Member involved in the event a chance to be competitive to some extent. For more info refer to the Amateur Status and Handicap sections below.

Please Note:
We are going out of our way and creating extra work for ourselves, so the more inexperienced Tiger Woods players have a chance to compete!!! It will be fairly easy for us to spot any sandbagging and other shenanigans, so please do not try to abuse the handicap system!!! As mentioned many times before, if winning at any cost is what you are looking for you do not belong in this League or in this community.



History

The Tradition Sports Online Golf League was started in 2011, by Basis4aDay56 and KnightNoles, with the intent of creating a cross platform, competitive, fun simulation style golf experience. The first full season of this league saw the completion of 10 events, with more then 50 golfers participating.

xyzvld22, JohnnyClutch and RynoAid have taken over management of the League for the 2012 Season, and later on SkinniePost, a veteran from one of the most successful golf leagues, the WiiGA, joined the team.


For more information feel free to visit any of the following sites, and leave us a message:

Tradition Sports Online - Tiger Woods PGA Tour

Tradition Sports Online - Facebook


If you have any questions you can contact the Management Team via PM on this site. Or you can also contact us at the EA Forums by using the following links and sending a PM there:

RynoAid @ EA Forums

xyzvld22 @ EA Forums

SkinniePost @ EA Forums

johnnyclutch28 @ Ea Forums

We hope to see you soon in the Tradition Sports Online Forums, and as a Member of one of our Online Country Clubs getting ready to compete for The Tradition Cup...

TCCT Rules and Regulations​

The basic Tradition Sports Online Rules can be found at the link below.

General Site Rules


Tradition Sports Online is a "simulation" based video game community, and TCCT will use the settings available in the game to create an environment which is as close to playing golf in real life as possible. To institute this concept we will be setting up events with either the Tour Pro or Tournament swing style, or a hybrid somewhere in between the two. Also, the Caddy and Boost Pins settings will be turned off.

The Management Team also reserves the right to modify or change any of the following Rules and Information as deemed necessary and/or through consultation of the TCCT Members for their input.

TCCT Membership Information​

The TCCT is open to all Tiger Woods 14 players that would like to join Tradition Sports Online or are already Members here. For new Members, you will first need to register and complete the short application process to be admitted to TSO. Also, make sure to specify in your application that you would like to be a part of the TCCT. Since the Online Country Club feature has become an integral part of the TCCT events this season you will need to be placed into one of the available clubs, and information about this process can be found below.


TCCT Country Club Membership

Country Club Membership will be granted to any member of the TSO community. You will need to visit the threads for either the XBOX or PS3, and express your interest. You will then be directed to one of the TCCT Online Country Clubs and given the password to join.

A full list of Members involved can be found here: Member List (NEEDS UPDATED)

​

​

NO GUEST CCs FOR 2013 SORRY!!!!!​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Affiliate Country Club Membership Information​

The Tradition Cup is being expanded this year to include any of the EA Online Country Clubs that would like to be involved in the competition. If you would like to become an Affiliated Guest Country Club refer to the instructions below.


Guest Membership (via Affiliated Country Clubs)

If you are the Administrator or Owner of a Country Club who would like to join please use the contact information below, and we will start the process. Basically your representation will be required to join TSO, so that they can be in communication with the TCCT Management Team. All required settings and scheduling information will be available here, so you can coordinate the Weekly Tournament events in your Country Club to match The Tradition Cup schedule. The representative will also need to submit a list of the scores their Members posted, so they can be added to the Leader Board. All Guest Country Clubs will also be expected to follow the principles and rules of the TCCT, if they will be competing in The Tradition Cup events.

If you would like to join in on the competition or have any questions, please feel free to use the contact information found at the bottom of the post linked below.

Management Team Contact Information


Below is a list of the Guest Country Clubs that will be competing for The Tradition Cup this season.

Guest Country Club List

The Tradition Cup​

The Tradition Cup is a season long competition similar to the FedEx Cup, with standings based on points system. The schedule was made to resemble that of the actual PGA Tour, and the last 3 tournaments of the schedule will be considered The Tradition Cup Playoffs. There is also a Match Play event scheduled during the season, which will give players the opportunity to compete in a series of head to head matches. This season the TCCT has decided to include a Handicap System, and Pro/AM style play to give everyone involved an opportunity to compete. But the main Leader Board will still be based on scratch score just like the actual PGA Tour. A section for Senior Members is also in the works. More detailed information about The Tradition Cup can be found below.


Basic Rules

• The following basic rules will be in place for The Tradition Cup, until further notice:
• The swing style will be set to Expert Swing (Tournament) with the Swing Meter ON. These settings will be looked at based on the scores being submitted, and may be changed at some point during the season. CLICK HERE FOR CHANGES FOR 2013 SEASON
• The events will be set to run from Monday until Sunday, with 2 tries and 1 submission. This means you will get 5 tries to complete the 4 required rounds. Please do not use the extra round unless you get disconnected from EA or Xbox Live. If you disconnect more than once please contact one of the GM's for information on how to proceed.
• The rules for ties are listed below.
• The settings for each week will be listed in a thread in the TSO Forums, and will be sent to all Club GM's so that they can be set for the following week. All you have to do is complete the 4 rounds listed in your CC, and the results will be taken care of and listed on the Leader Board by the Club GM's

Regular Season Schedule

The spreadsheet linked below contains information about the schedule. Some important things to note on the schedule are when the Majors occurs and the Match Play Tournament. The Majors will be worth extra points in the race to The Tradition Cup Championship. Also, the schedule shows which events will be a part of the Pro/AM style events that will use the handicap system.

The Pro/AM system will begin with The Players Championship. From there on every tournament we play will use 2 scoreboards, one for scratch play and another for Pro/AM play with handicaps. Also, note that there will be no Pro/AM events schedules for The Masters and the PGA Championship.


During the season trophies will be given to the winner of each tournament for their signature, and also displayed in a trophy gallery. Also, the winners of the following Pro/AM events will be given special awards as follows:

• [The winner of the US Open Pro-Am will be named US Amateur Champion
• The winner of The Open Championship will be named Amateur Champion Golfer of the Year
• The winner of The Bing Crosby National will be named National Pro-Am Champion

The Tradition Cup Schedule


Playoff Information

After the Regular Season has been complete and a winner has been crowned, the points will be reset, similar to the final round of the FedEx Cup, so that all players involved have a chance to take home the Championship. No field cuts will be made during the Playoff though, unlike the actual FedEx Cup Championship Rounds, so that everyone will be allowed to play in all of the tournaments.

The Tradition Cup Playoff Schedule


Points System

The Point System that will be used to determine the Leader Board standing can be seen below. It has weighted points for the Majors and Match Play events.




Pro/AM Status

The Pro/AM system was included this year to give all players a chance to win. The Pro/AM events will use the handicap system to create a level playing field. The following rules will be used to exclude players from participating in the Pro/AM Tournaments:

1. TCCT Professional Tournament Winners – If you win one of the Tournaments against the full field you will excluded from Pro/AM play from the rest of the season. Note that winning a Pro-Am Event does not count towards this exclusion.
2. The top 10% or the Top 5 (decided by management) of the players in The Tradition Cup Standings will be excluded from Pro/AM status. This exclusion will be determined before the start of each event on the schedule.
3. Any player that has established a handicap that is lower than the cut-off line determined by TCCT management. This exclusion will also be determined before the start of each event on the schedule.
4. Rule #2 & 3 may be adjusted during the season in an effort to provide a system that gives everyone an opportunity to win.

Handicap System

The handicap system being used is modeled after the actual USGA system, with a few slight modifications. The actual handicap formula used can be seen below.

Handicap = (Score - Course Rating) X 113 ÷ Slope Rating

The modifications are as follows:

• The Course Rating used has been adjusted since this is a video game. Normally the course rating is determined to be the score a scratch golfer would score on the course. This number has been reduced to 68, so that fewer of the handicaps will be in the negative range.
• The Slope Rating that will be used is an average of all the courses in the game, to allow for easier application of this number to the formula.

The below is a list of other rules that will be used in the creation of the handicaps:

• Minimum of 5 official rounds need to be completed for establishing of a handicap.
• Only the 16 most recent rounds will be used for calculating golfer's handicap.
• Maximum handicap as per USGA is 36.If you play higher than that you will use 36
• Only a certain number of the 16 most recent scores will be used in the calculation, to help eliminate sandbagging and provide a handicap that better reflects the player’s actual skill level. This formula is as follows:
  • For 15-16 rounds recorded, only the lowest 6 scores will be used
  • For 13-14 rounds recorded, only the lowest 5 scores will be used
  • For 11-12 rounds recorded, only the lowest 4 scores will be used
  • For 9-10 rounds recorded, only the lowest 3 scores will be used
  • For 7-8 rounds recorded, only the lowest 2 scores will be used
  • For 5-6 rounds recorded, only the lowest score will be used
• All handicaps will be recalculated after the conclusion of every tournament, except the Match Play event, since it will not use the Handicap System.

Tie Breaker System

An additional Daily Event will be set-up following the Weekly Tradition Cup rounds in the case of a tie for First Place. This event will be set on Sunday, and anyone who has a chance to tie for first should enter a score, since it will be used to determine the tie breaker for first place, sort of like a playoff. With any other tie being accounted for by averaging the points that would have been distributed to the players that are tied. So for example if there is a tie for 3rd place between 2 players, the points that would have gone to both 3rd and 4th will be added together and divided in half.


Partial Round Completion Points

A partial point system is being included this season to help player that are unable to complete all of the required rounds for a given tournament. So even if you are only able to complete 3 of the 4 rounds, you can still receive point for the rounds you did complete. The system will work as follows:

• Partial Round Points will be based on the place you finished in the final standings for the tournament, based on total score to par.
• This final point number with be modified according to how many rounds you actually finished, since you could possibly finish higher, with only 3 rounds completed than someone who finished all four rounds. The modification is as follows:
  • 3 Rounds completed = 75% of the points received
  • 2 Rounds completed = 50% of the points received
  • 1 Rounds completed = 25% of the points received

Important Links

Links to threads that contain information about Tournament Settings, Game Play Settings, and anything else that relates to playing in The Tradition Cup will be posted here.

The Tradition Cup - Match Play Information​

The Match Play Tournaments, one for Xbox players and one for PS3, will be played as head to head matches. You will be seeded in brackets based on your position on the Tradition Cup Leader Board at the start of the Match Play event. More information on the Match Play Tournament will be provided in the weeks leading up to the event, which can be found on The Tradition Cup Schedule.

Other TCCT Information​

Outside of the The Tradition Cup Tournaments, there will be other events available to TCCT Members which will included the following:

• For Ryder Cup special events the current Tradition Cup Standings will be used to determine who will play for the TCCT Team. The idea is to send out our best team against the other Country Clubs we will be competing against. The list of Members being included in the team will be determined prior to the start of the Ryder Cup style events. We have already been in contact with a number of other Online Country Clubs, and are in the process of coordinating these Ryder Cup style events. We will keep you posted as things begin to come together.
• Daily Events will beset up through the EA Online Country Club feature. Some of the Daily Events will be up for Member Sponsorship. The criteria for how you can Sponsor a series of Daily events is still to be determined, but for example if you win one of the Tradition Cup events you may get the option to submit setting for a Daily Event of your choice. More information to follow in the coming weeks.
• Other events may be created depending on the level of TCCT Members interest and involvement in the League, so feel free to create discussion regarding possible optional events.

The TCCT Management team has finalized settings and rules for the season.
We hardly recommend all players involved with Tour to read and review our full rules and guidelines thread,however here is a summary on things we've decided:

1.Gameplay Settings : difficulty,conditions and golfers
2.Disconnect and freezing issues
3.Country Clubs GM responsibilities

I will keep this thread open to allow specific questions on all the contents.
I will however most likely remove all swing meter debate

BlyGilmore
bprough
BRUCE80
@CBK63010
houdiniHUSKER
Danthraxxx
Cheez
Keller
uncleho
MantisPower
@Merk1981
niuhuskie224
Noles1724
ren6175
RynoAid
2nd2none
Selvy9
Shaun Mason
SkinniePost
StormJr
Cgreen214
Wvgolfer81
ZFarls
JohnnyClutch
abolishthefed
Boom29
Bigpearl
BirdDog1980
CapEm16
Eaglems302
Gaziola
Got the Shakes
jlukes
NismoRR
RadarRider
Patriot9
Jamie
recchem2000
shootah66
Noahsdadphil
Darkwing
Timpegoose
androomaj
Cheekaay
bamagrad
Famou5 Five
Matt10
beardcoast
stufat
Altern8
boil16
Bruinboy20
buddycris75
Chale83
County5
Dominik
Dub-ya
Emmdotfrisk
FLIGHTWHITE
Goose
jbuck75
Jon Carroll
krtgolfing
N3XT
Paulitix
ragingpoodle
Redef
SmokeCG25
thoov08
TiredPlayer
@xyzvld22
J_Man_813
NDCOLTS1979
DrunkenSoldier
PitVipers
rktkt4
thebouncer24
spmono
Bsizzle732
capp34
ivunphstu
@PCAR76
@Talldude55

Disconnect and freezing issues​

In case of a disconnect from EA servers during the game DO NOT quit the game.Press start and you should see an option that prompts you to re-connect to EA Servers.If this option is not there,finish the round and then once again you should be able to re-connect and submit!!!

If this doesn't work and you have to restart the tournament they will be setup as 2 tries/1 submission.This means you will have total of 5 entries to complete 4 rounds.Please remember that big part of this tour,our community and the game of golf is based on honor and integrity and do not try to abuse this.We will keep track and pay attention of what is going on,and will hate to be the bad guys.

We played the game a lot over the years and we have an idea how rarely disconnects/freezes happen.In case one of you continues to have issues with those, we recommend that you check your internet connection,router settings,console issues etc.We would hate to loose people,but if we get the same people having trouble over and over again we will have to deal with that.

In case you've exceed your 5 tries for the tournament

We will accept the scores for the rounds submitted.For the rest of your rounds you will have to:

1.Co-ordinate a H2H match with a member of your CC.
2.Setup 18 hole simultaneous stroke play with conditions matching exactly those of the tournament ( for pin placement use : R1- easy,R2-medium,R3-hard,R4-expert)
3.Report the score of this round in the scoring thread of the tournament
4.Have the person who played with you confirm the score is correct in the same thread

Country Clubs GM responsibilities​

For the TCCT purposes country club GM is any person who created the CC,or has GM rights for the CC

To run our tour as smooth as we can,we will count on you guys to help us out.The things we'll need

1.Roster File maintenance : all GMs will be given access to the TCCT Roster Google spreadsheet.It is your responsibility to periodically keep it up to date with current roster with PSN/Gamertags and TSO IDs (in cases where your players are TSO members

2.Weekly Tournament Setup : you'll need to setup a weekly tournament with settings exactly matching those announced by TCCT management.
When setting up those you'll need to use caution as some of the default settings (green grids off) are easy to miss and wrong.There is also no way settings to be changed once tournament has been created.
If the settings are messed up we will not be able to accept scores for your players for this tournament!!!

3.Score input: all GMs will also will be given access to the weekly scoring spreadsheets.You will have to periodically update the scores for your country club trough the week.
***Do this ONLY in the sub-sheet for your club.TCCT management will take care of combining the scores in the main sheet.

***The correct format for entering the scores is strokes only ex. 72,66 etc. This may require a bit of simple math as the default output in the tournament standings is to par.
Please do not input as par +1,E or combination 71 (-1).Although we appreciate the extra effort,we have the spreadsheet do this job for us,and it will mess up our data

4.Guest CLubs GM's guidelines,expectations etc

1. We expect you the encourage the members of your clubs to join TSO,so they can participate in all TCCT related discussions.
2. When replacing members or recruiting new ones you need to explain to them the format,rules and regulations of TCCT.Your new members need to agree with all this before we are able to include them ivunphstu mention it is possibly for players to not even know they are part of this.It will also prevent a situation for you where you members are complaining you have the same settings weekly tournaments
3. The default weekly tournament TCCT settings is 7 days.This is to allow our members maximum flexibility to put their rounds in.We DO NOT require your tournament to be setup for 7 days,in case you want to setup something different for intraclub competition.You do however need to enter all 4 rounds of our tournament in the spreadsheet bu Sunday night

JohnnyClutch
RynoAid
SkinniePost
stufat
ivunphstu

Basically we will use the first 3 tournaments to establish handicap for everyone.
After that we will start running 2 leaderboards one straight up and one with net scores with the handicaps.
The people who have won a tournament and the top 20% of the TCCT Cup standings will not be included in the handicap leaderboards in essence allowing worse players to compete for 'amateur titles'.
I can't remember if we decided to include guests CCs in those or is it just for TSO members