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The most memorable moments from your outing that golfers will relive long afterwards can be manufactured. They also have the added benefit of helping your outing generate a little extra cash.
Sabotage games are exactly what they sound like. Teams pay a fee to place a penalty challenge on one other group in the field. The targeted team must complete the challenge on a designated hole, whether they like it or not. No skill required, no complicated logistics, just competitive golfers who will absolutely spend money to watch their rivals suffer.
Keep the structure simple. Each team gets opportunity to purchase a sabotage at any point during the round. The fee should feel low enough that groups don't hesitate but high enough that it adds up across a full field. Fifteen to twenty-five dollars per sabotage is a good starting point.
When a group buys a sabotage, they receive a card on which they can write a team name and check off the challenge the team must complete.
The key is choosing challenges that are funny to watch or complete without being impossible to do. If the challenge is too difficult, groups get frustrated rather than entertained. If it's too easy, it loses its comedic effect. Here are five that I think would be fun, if I were to be sabotaged.
For other options, OneCause's golf outing game resource covers several contest formats that follow this "low barrier, high entertainment" principle.
The choice to sabotage a team should come with some thoughtful consideration. To ensure teams don't get away free of consequence, the sabotaged team gets to know exactly who sabotaged them, and then can purchase the exact same sabotage for that team at a discount.
You can enhance the revenue potential by offering a "sabotage insurance" add-on at registration. For an extra $10, a team can purchase immunity from one incoming sabotage attempt. The insurance creates an additional decision point without complicating the core format.
The math works cleanly for a 36-team field. If 24 teams purchase sabotages at $20 each and 15 teams buy insurance at $10 each, you've generated $630 in pure additional revenue with no vendor cost, no prize fulfillment, and no overhead.
Print the challenge cards in advance with your event branding. For theatrics, make them Yellow or Red and present them to the team like a soccer ref does at a soccer match.
You'll need a designated sabotage marshal or team. The marshal tracks which teams have purchased and who has been sabotaged. The marshal should be someone with a good sense of humor who can communicate the challenge to the targeted team with appropriate theatrical flair.
You'll also need some mechanism for a team on the course to signal to the marshal that they'd like to impose a sabotage on another team. Easiest way is to give all the teams access to a phone number they can text the hole they are on. One of your marshal team members will drive out, get the card and then drive to the sabotaged team's hole to present them with the card. This is an area where live scoring comes in very handy because you can check the leaderboard to see which hole the sabotaged team is on.
There's a good chance the teams at the top are going to be targeted more than others. To avoid those teams getting frustrated, you may want to impose a limit on how often a team can be sabotaged. A limit of 2 or 3 times is good. Too many hurdles starts to detract from the fun instead of enhance it.