I wouldn't call this "a form within a form". I would call this project "a dynamic form". That is, instead of a regular form that has known fields (name, address, city, state, for example), you are going to have some unknown number of fields in this form.
There are lots of ways to approach this. If you have fewer than 100 golfers, then you can probably do this as a single form that posts to the following page which updates all the records for all the golfers. If you have more than 100, then you might want to look into Ajax where you can change a golfer's record and it saves that data immediately (without reloading the page).
The simplest way to do this is with a single dynamic form that posts to the following page. You will need two pages: An "input" page with a form that has all the golfers listed and their data that you can edit. This form posts to a "process" page that receives all the data from the previous page and updates the records for all the golfers. If you choose this route (which I suggest you do because then you only have to learn to make a dynamic form, you don't have to learn Ajax at the same time), then you have a number of different ways you can make a dynamic form.
The way I like to do it is this:
Create a file called input.php
<form action="process.php" method="post">
<?php // PHP code that reads all the golfer's data from the database
// and then creates input fields for each golfer
?>
</form>
Assuming that each golfer has a numerical ID, I embed the id in the field name like this:
<form action="process.php" method="post">
// Open Database
// Get golfer data
// Loop through golfer data
print "Golfer name: $name ";
print "<input type=radio name=\"status-$golfer_id\" value=1> Yes ";
print "<input type=radio name=\"status-$golfer_id\" value=2> No";
// Finish Loop
// Close Database
</form>
When you run that code, you will have a form. How many fields are in that form will depend on how many golfers are in the database.
Then, in process.php, you look at all the values in the $_REQUEST variable and check each one to see if it's in the form: status-###. If so, then you look at it's value and update the database to this new value where the golfer's ID is ###.
For example, you will have a variable name get passed to the process.php like status-123. This isn't a variable that you hard coded into the form, this is a variable that the input page created dynamically based on that golfer's ID#.
Give it a try, let us know how it goes.
