Teams of 2–4
👥How to play best ball (four-ball): golf team format rules
Best ball (a two-player version is "four-ball") is the team format where you never have to pick up: everybody plays their own ball all the way out, and on each hole the team’s score is simply its best player’s score. It keeps everyone in every hole while rewarding the one who steps up.
The rules
Each player holes out (or is given a gimme) on their own ball. On every hole the team takes its lowest score. That’s the team’s number. Best ball is only how that number is made; the game is played with it one of two ways.
As match play, two teams compare their numbers hole by hole: the lower one wins the hole, and the match goes to the team that wins more holes. A four-ball match is two against two this way. As stroke play, each team adds its numbers up over the round and the lowest total wins, which is how a field of teams plays it.
Handicaps usually run at a percentage of each player’s course handicap, 90% for a four-ball match, 85% for four-ball stroke play or Stableford (WHS Appendix C), with strokes falling on the holes the card says.
Counting more than one score
A team can count more than its single best score. In the classic outing game, teams of four count their two lowest net scores on every hole, which keeps three of the four players in it on most holes and gives a fair number across a wide range of handicaps. Count every score and no shot on the team is a throwaway.
How Swilkin runs it
Pick Best ball (four-ball) in Swilkin with any number of teams and set Scores that count to 1, 2 or All for each team; two teams can play it as Match play or Stroke play, more than two as Stroke play. It counts the right number of balls on every hole, nets each player off their course handicap for the tees they are playing, or off a number you set by hand, and drives the live leaderboard. Stack a match, skins or dots on the same card and every one settles itself.