Transcripts - Episode 2: Delaware Golf Trip 2025 w/ Birdie Board

The Birdie Board podcast is brought to you by the Birdie Board app, the easiest way to track matches, scores, and handicaps with friends. Now, here's your host, Corey, with another episode of the Birdie Board podcast.

Welcome back to this week's episode of the Birdie Board podcast. Have an exciting episode this week. We're actually going to go over a pretty big event we had with Birdie Board.

So every year, once starting to turn into a tradition, we go on a golf trip, being a couple buddies from church. So last year started as a group of eight of us, kind of the first version of Birdie Board, I would say. I was an Excel sheet or Google sheet that we shared among everyone on the trip. Went really, really well, and that's kind of what led to what you guys know as Birdie Board today.

But what was different this season is the actual Birdie Board app, which is a big part of why this podcast, see that exists. So leading into this golf trip, instead of eight guys, we had 12, but we still wanted to format it the exact same way. So this is how we formatted it.

So we had a six versus six match, one or six people on the red team, six people on the blue team. The match was split into three different rounds. The first round was stable forward, so it's team stable forward. So how that works is the combined stable for score of one team is put up against the combined stable for score of the other team. And then the stable forward is scored that's based off of the net of each individual golfer.

So if you're not familiar with stable forward, it is a way to play golf where it is high score wins instead of low score wins. And what it really helps with is it helps minimize the effect of the really bad holes. So we did regular stable forward, which means a double bogey or worse is just zero points. So if you have a really bad hole, like you shot eight or nine or 10, even after your handicap was applied, the worst you're going to get for your team is a zero. And then you get points based off of how well you do on that hole. So a bogey is one point at par is two points. Birdie is three equals four. Albatross is five.

So, for example, on the first hole of our match here, we had a score of the red team had a combined score of 10 points, and the blue team had a score of 11. So that means the blue team won that hole.

So that was round one. And kind of backing up, I guess, for a second, I forgot to mention that every hole is scored individually, which helps also minimize the impact. So if you have one really bad hole, which will matter later in the round, then it's not as impactful to the overall round.

So how we scored is kind of like a many rider format, where if you know in rider, like you can score a point for a team, or you split it, or you don't get anything, but it considers the whole round at play, all 18 holes. And then you just get one point or no points in the end, or half a point. It's kind of like that, but we do it whole by so every pole has a point of her grabs.

So on the first day, it's six versus six. So that means really really have 18 points up for grabs between the two teams.

So that was day one. Day two—and I'll go over the results in a little bit—day two was a format of best ball. And so instead of six versus six, we split it into three, two versus two groups, and the two players play best ball. It's still based off of the net score, but the same idea where it's still hole by hole. The second day, there's 54 points up for grabs. So 18 times three.

And then the last day, it comes down to just one versus one. So this is just stroke net play. We try to pair up the golfers that are most similar to each other. So that's kind of the format for the whole match.

And this is kind of how it went down. So this trip was our 2020 five version of our golf trip leading after our 2024 version. We have, like I said, three rounds, 12 guys, two separate teams, and then we use birdie board to just kind of manage the whole thing and keep things organized.

The golf match was in Southern Delaware, which has some really beautiful courses down there. There's a lot of a mix of open fairways. We played a links course. We played just more of your traditional course course with a lot of water, a lot of nice variety. Birdie board helped aid in a lot of the trash talk throughout the trip. And we just simply had a red team and a blue team. Like I said, you win a hole, you get a point; you tie a hole, you have it; or you get nine in a loss. So simple—just pure competition—and birdie board track to shop I shot.

Round one was, of course, caught heritage shores. We played the championship teas, which were 6,430 yards. The course rating was 71 with a slope rating of 138. I think the course was in perfect shape. It had a lot of long open fairways. But I wouldn't say all of them were straight, but they did invite big drives if you could get around corners or cut the corners or something like that. But it wasn't very forgiving off the fairways. The greens were pretty punishing. No matter where you were, they were broke fast, but they weren't the hardest greens of the weekend.

One nice thing about having the six versus six format is it really came down to the team's collective performance. So you're in a car with your teammates rather than your competitors. So you're kind of getting to know your group and stuff. It's a great way to kick off a golf tournament is having more of a very higher emphasis on that team play rather than individual play and maybe slowly work toward that individual play. So that's how we've set it up for the last two years, and it's worked really well.

Because sometimes in these types of golf tournaments, you just won't see some of your teammates at all. Even if you're just always playing like one versus one matches or best ball, like you just might never see pure low handicap, or you might never be paired with a high handicap or something like that. But the cool thing about a six versus six on the first day, or this format that we did, is you get to just be in a cart with all your teammates.

So through the 18 holes, Birdboard made the round very effortless. All the people had to do is just put in the score, their actual score, and Birdboard adjusted based off of everyone's individual handicap. It also adjusts their score based off of the course rating and slope rating, which is really important because we have a high range of handicaps out on this golf trip. And then three, it applied to stay before it scored, did all the math, and figure out who won each hole. So throughout the round, everyone was able to kind of watch the track, just the app, to kind of see how the round was going.

And it was a really exciting round. The whole round pretty much went back and forth. The red team and the blue team—so again, just the two teams—hole one was hole one was one by the blue team, and red team came right back in one hole two. So we were already one on one, just two holes in. Blue team then went on a four hole stretch. So by hole six, the blue team was up five to one right off the bat. But then red team started coming back. They won eight and nine, blue team won 10, red team won 11, blue team won 12 and 13, and then red team finished really, really strong, winning four of the last five holes.

So in the end, the 18 points that were up for grabs, 10 of them went to the blue team and eight of them went to the red team, making it just a two point match going into the next day.

Some of the key stats that came out of the first day: Cam shot four under his hand cap with 68. That was the best net score of the day. It was a gross score of 81. The highest score of the game went to a guy who went by the name two way miss rye. He shot a 120, which was well above their handicap. The best net hole was actually a net hole in one by Ryan, which is cool to see. The most consistent score on the day was Doug. And then the worst blowup hole was also the two way miss rye, which he had a hole that was almost four strokes above his round average. So that was definitely a mulligan moment for him.

The next day was our best ball day. So we had three competitions going on. It was easy to just throw the whole competition inside of a cart. So we had Josh versus two way ride on the red team and Patrick versus sweet Joey on the blue team. We have bow out on Doug on the red team versus teammates and myself on the blue team. And then we had Cam and Noah on the red team versus Matt and Ryan on the blue team. So a lot of great competitions going on here.

As I mentioned earlier, day two had 54 points up for grabs—of three competitions of 18 holes each—a lot of points there. And this kind of highlights of this round.

So we played a course called daywood greens, probably the most beautiful course we played at all week and definitely be premier course that we scheduled. It had some of the most picturesque moments, I think probably in southern Delaware for a lot of the courses. I know there's some a couple better courses than they would, but man, this one has some beautiful scenes.

We played a later tee time. We barely got it done, but we teed off around 2:30. So we were out on the course right around sunset. So it was beautiful. We played the white tees. I think most of us wanted to play the white tees. We debated the blue teams, but since we were having a later tee time, it was better for us to tee off on the shorter tee tees for a piece of play. So that gave us a course rating of a 70.2 and a slope rating of 134. So still a little harder for the your bogey golfers out there.

The round switch to that two versus two best ball format. So, like I said, there was three matches and 54 points up for grabs. So this is how it kind of went down.

The Cam and Noah team, which is red, versus Matt and Ryan, which was a blue team—red came out really hot, and they snagged 11 of the 18 points. So that match up finished with red getting 11 points and blue getting seven.

Bow out and Doug from the red team played T Bates and myself. This is the only team of the day that actually won it for the blue team. So—and it was a narrow margin—so blue got nine and a half points, and red got eight and a half. So only one by a point there.

And then Josh in two way miss right for the red team played Patrick H and sweet Joey V on the blue team. That was another tight match, but red still ultimately came out on in the end at 10 and a half to seven and a half on that.

So kind of when everything settled on the day, the red team swapped the leader. So if you remember round one, blue team was winning by two. Now, at the end of round two, red team surge ahead. They earned 30 points to the blue team's 24, which split the overall match to in their favor were now red team is up 38, 34. And birdie board just showed all of this. It was instant and beautifully organized. I think it really helped us just focus on the match and just enhanced the fun of it.

A couple key highlights from the round: Ryan and he caught fire on this day head. He took the hot streak honors in birdie board scoring at eight roll, eight hole run of five or less strikes on the day. Matt continued his reputation as the straight shooter, which is the most consistent score on the day. Sweet Joey V locked up the sixes wild title, which is how many holes of six or more than anyone else. And T base had a tough hole on number 10, which might still be a topic of conversation next year. And I think he shot like a 10 or something on that hole.

So by the end of round two, still really tight match—38, 34. And now we're going into round three, which is played at the length at St. Ann's, which was in middle town, so a little bit north of southern Delaware. So this day, we also played from the white T boxes, that it was 6,145 yards, course rating of 69.6, slope rating of 125.

And it really was anyone's match. On this last day, this one, the individual strokes matter the most. We just played one versus one net stroke play. And there was six head to head match ups, which meant there was 108 points on the line. So every hole really mattered. Even if you were down, you could still earn points for your team.

And this is kind of how the day unfolded. So how pretty board works is it organizes in a round like this, it organizes the competitions based off handicap. So what it will try to do is we'll try to keep the closest handicaps together. So the two lowest handicaps were cam and mat. So they played one on one. Now Cam still received a couple strokes over mat because Cam was, I think I had like a 12 or 13 handicap, and Matt was at a nine. So we're still playing net, net stroke play.

Cam started off really strong with like a 5–1 lead over mat, but Matt helped reduce the bleeding and ended up still losing in the end, but finishing the match 11–7. We're finishing the competition 11–7, earning seven points for the blue team and Cam earning 11 for the red team.

The next competition was the next step up in handicap. So that was Noah and Ryan, and they had a incredible match. And by the end, it was dead even 9–9. So they played each other really strong. Birdie board found a nice even match up between the two of them, and they both earned their team's nine points. It's really the type of match that I think defines a nice friendly competition. Sure, they had fun through the whole thing.

The next was very, very similar. We have Bow Wow on the red team versus teammates on the blue team. Again, another hard fought battle with a 9–9 draw in the end. So at this point, there was only a four-point advantage for the red team.

But this kind of broke down a little bit. This was the biggest blowout of the day. It was myself versus Doug. I definitely had a really final day. I shot a 96 at a pretty difficult course. But that wasn't by far my best round. And it was still two over my handicap. The difference with that match is Doug just had a really rough day. He shot, I think, 120. And he shot right around 100 the two days before. So just the course just didn't treat him right. And unfortunately for the end, that meant that I won 15 of the 18 holes, getting 15 points for the blue team to his three points for the red team, which was the biggest margin of the weekend.

The next competition was similar story here. It was Patrick H versus Josh. Patrick was on the blue team, Josh was on the red team. And Patrick played similar to what he played the previous two days. But the course just tore up Josh. Josh had a rough day. He locked up hole horror on the day, which scoring a 12 on a par three, just getting stuck in a bunker. We've all been there before. It just couldn't get out.

It was a cool opportunity. We were talking a little bit after that hole. There's a rolling golf where you can take a two stroke penalty at any time to get free relief. His ball was pretty plugged in that bunker. It was a grass bunker with really, really thick grass that just kind of grabbed your club. It might have been an opportunity for him to have taken that. You know, hindsight's 20/20. I don't know how much it would have really changed things, but it was a cool opportunity. And those things you just don't really get by not playing golf very often. So you don't see that too often, but it was a cool opportunity to kind of talk to Josh about it. I've had no means in that expert. You're always in those situations thinking you're going to get out of the bunker, but unfortunately, in this case, he just did it.

So that end map, that round also ended pretty one sided, with Patrick winning 12 and a half of the points to Josh only winning five and a half. So at this point, Blue Team has a pretty favorable lead over the Red Team.

Then we get to our last match or competition of the day, which is two-way miss-ride on the Red Team versus Sweet Joey V on the Blue Team. These were the highest handicappers of the weekend, but it was a pretty tight battle throughout. They ended with Red Team winning the majority of the points, two-way miss-ride getting 10 of the points and Sweet Joey V getting eight.

But if you're doing the math in your head, you kind of realize that that wasn't enough. So when Birdie Board finally tallied all the points together, Blue Team stormed back after their deficit going into round three. They got 60 and a half of the points available to Red Team's 47 and a half, which gave them that final victory they needed with a final score of 94 and a half for the Blue Team to the 85 and a half on the Red Team, only a nine-point difference.

Birdie Board does something cool too. It summarizes the feathered feats not just for each round, but it also does it for the whole match. We have a stack called Team MVP, which is just highlighting how many points everyone gets for their respective teams. This really highlights how much they're contributing, even if they're not like the best golfer on the team.

That's one of the things I really like about Birdie Board is it will give the stats that can show that high handicapper is even contributing versus a low handicap handicapped golfer. So the team MVP is how many points out those 90 some points or this 70 points in the loss or this 80 points on the loss that they get their team.

So because of my performance on the last day, I got my team 30 and a half points out of the 94 and a half that our team won with. Patrick H, who also had a strong performance on the very last day, got 27 and a half of the points. And then two-way Miss Rye, who was one of the higher handicappers, actually earned his team 26 of the points. He was the highest team points for the Blue Team. So he's not the best golfer on the team, but that's the cool thing about Birdie Board is that it allows golfers to still be effective.

So just closing thoughts. It was a fun weekend. We played 54 holes over three days at three separate courses. The Blue Team rose victoriously at the end. We did have a prize, which was cool, where the winning team is going to play at the Philadelphia Country Club, which I'm pretty excited about. I have actually never played at a country club before, so I'm looking forward to that.

It was cool personally to see Birdie Board on the scale. Up to this point, I've only done smaller weekend rounds. I've done two multi-round matches—once in Ocean City, New Jersey with my dad and once with Sweet Joey B. Over two days, both went well, both found some bug fixes, but that led to some of the success we saw for this trip. So it's really just satisfying to look back. It seemed like everyone really enjoyed it. Got good reviews for Birdie Board. And it was just a good weekend with friends.

So that's it for this episode of Birdie Board. I'm going to continue to keep trying to release these on a regular basis. If you're interested in trying Birdie Board out, it is free on the App Store right now. Both Apple and Google, you guys can download it there. If you do download it, please leave a review. That means a lot. It helps kind of get the word out about Birdie Board.

If you don't like it for some reason, don't leave a review. I would actually love to hear why you don't like it, because I'm kind of in the earlier stages of building Birdie Board. So you can go to Birdie Board.gov, send me a message, and kind of let me know why you didn't like it. That's actually a lot more constructive than leaving a one-star review without any comments, because I just don't know why you're leaving one-star review. And I really just want Birdie Board to be a great app for everyone that uses it.

So that's it. Going to sign off. Until next time, enjoy golf.

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