New Member Orientation

The following page is intended to help new CHMGA members quickly come up to speed with CHMGA procedures and policies. It will help you initially navigate the CHMGA website to find how to sign-up for your first tournament and to understand how flighting and handicapping is done for our tournaments. If you have any questions about any of the information contained here (or in the website in general), please email info@chmga.club.

Our main website, located at CHMGA.CLUB, is your best source for information about the various club tournaments, policies, etc. It’s pretty intuitive for most items, but you should always start there when trying to find information.

We use a system called Golf Genius to manage the association’s tournaments, To log on to Golf Genius click the following link, Golf Genius, and enter ch2026 in the GGID field before hitting “next”. That will take you to the home page for the association. Once there, you can see the 2026 calendar by clicking on “Home”, followed by “Calendar”. From the Calendar you can see the tee sheets for each tournament, the results for each tournament, and which tournaments are open for you to sign-up for. Just select the tournament you are interested in and follow the instructions to sign-up. You can also get to Golf Genius via the association website described above.
Typically, you’ll get an email message 3-4 weeks before a tournament is available for sign-up to let you know it is now open, along with the format for the tournament and other important information. The week prior to the tournament you’ll receive an email with the initial tee times and pairings, with final tee times/pairings mailed out the day before the tournament.

For most tournaments, members are allowed to choose the tee box they want to play for the tournament (typically Cinnabar, Cinnabar/Quicksilver Combos, or Quicksilvers). Based on the tee boxes selected, we create “flights” grouping all the members for each tee box together (so you only compete against members playing the same tees. If a flight gets large enough, we may also sub-flight it further to have smaller competitions. Our policy on how we flight tournaments can be found on the website at: Flighting Guidelines.

We use a modified version of your USGA handicap index that we call your Tournament Index for handicapping our tournaments. Your Tournament Index is calculated the same way your normal USGA index is calculated, EXCEPT we only use your scores from our tournaments, and only your scores from the past two seasons, plus the current season. This is generally more reflective of your playing capability in our tournaments since you play based on the tournament rules we have. Your tournament index will be calculated after you’ve played in 3 tournaments. Before then, we’ll use 80% of your existing USGA handicap for any tournaments you play. You can see your tournament index and the scores used to calculate it on our web site at Tournament Index (TI) Lookup. Note: Your tournament index won’t display on the website until you sign-up for your first tournament.

All members pay a $25 entry fee for each tournament they play in. Approximately $22.50 of the entry fee goes into a pool that is distributed to the top finishers in each flight and to the members winning our closest to the pin contests. The remaining $2.50 goes into the prize money awarded to the Cinnabar Cup Season Long Points Winners and Club/NET Championship winners (see below). You can view the tables used to distribute the prize money for each flight at: Tournament Purse Table.

Several years ago, we created our own version of the Fed-Ex Cup, called the Cinnabar Cup. The Cinnabar Cup is a season long competition where members earn points in every tournament they play based on how they finish in the tournament. The members with the most points at the end of the season earn prize money based on their finish, and qualify for an end of the season “Ryder Cup” type tournament. You can see your current standings on our website at Cinnabar Cup Race. In addition, you can see how the points you get for each tournament are calculated at: Cinnabar Cup Points Distribution.

At the end of the season, we organize Match Play tournaments to determine a Club Champion (the best golfer in the club, playing GROSS scoring from the Hawk tees) and a NET Champion (open to members playing with their handicaps). Anyone who wishes to compete in the Club Championship can do so (as long as they play GROSS scoring from the Hawk tees). For the NET Champion, the top 16 finishers in a qualifying tournament played at the end of the season advance to the NET Championship Match Play tournament. More information can be found at: Club and NET Championships. To play in the Club and NET Championships you need to have played in at least 6 club tournaments during the current season.

In addition to the normal USGA Rules of Golf, we have several local rules we use for our tournaments. You can find them on our web site at Hard Card/Local Rules. You should read them prior to your first tournament and reach out to our Rules Chairman, Paul Vieth, if you have questions them.

Cinnabar Hills is very serious about players completing their rounds in 4 hours 30 minutes or less. While we don’t always achieve this, we ask our members to always play “Ready Golf” and stay in position with the group in front of them to meet Cinnabar Hill’s objective. We’ve instituted a system of warnings (and penalties) for members who continually fall behind during our tournaments. Please review our pace of play policy and ready golf guidelines at Pace of Play/Ready Golf.

In addition to the above links, you’l find general club information, such as contact information for the members of the Board of Directors, the Association By-Laws, Bi-Monthly Newsletters, etc. under the “Club Info” tab of the CHMGA website.