AGGREGATE TEAM SCORE

Aggregate is better ball's serious older brother. Same golf, everyone playing their own ball the whole way, but instead of taking the side's best score on each hole you add every score together.

One number changes the whole texture of a round. In better ball a triple bogey costs you nothing as long as your partner made par. In aggregate that triple is three shots straight onto the side's total, and your partner, who has been playing beautifully, now needs a birdie to get them back.

It is the format that makes a partner competition feel like a team sport.

How you play it

Nothing to learn. Everyone plays their own ball into the hole and holes out. In aggregate that matters, so there is no picking up when you are out of it.

That is the one practical cost of this format. In better ball a player who is out of a hole walks on; in aggregate they have to finish, which is slower and, on a bad hole, not much fun. Crews who mind about pace agree a maximum, net double bogey say, and pick up when they reach it, writing that number down.

How it scores

Add the side's net scores on each hole. As a match, the lower combined number wins the hole. As stroke play, the combined numbers add up across the round.

Front nine, back nine and the eighteen as three results.

Modified: counting the best few

With sides of three or four, using everybody's score every hole turns one blow-up into an unwinnable hole. Modified Aggregate fixes it: count only the best two or three scores on each hole instead of all of them.

This is the version to play with bigger sides, and it is a better game than it sounds. Everyone still has to produce, because you do not know in advance whose scores will count, but a single disaster is absorbed rather than fatal. With a four-person side, counting the best two is the sweet spot.

Handicaps

Full course handicap, on the lowest stroke indexes first. Aggregate already puts pressure on the weakest player in the side; cutting their allowance on top of that makes for a long afternoon.

If the sides are badly matched, balance the sides rather than the shots. Split the field by index so each side has a comparable spread. A side of two low handicaps against a side of two high ones is a poor match whatever strokes you hand out.

When to play it

Midweek, when the group has found its game and wants something with teeth. It is also the right format for a two-versus-two match you intend to talk about afterwards, because unlike better ball, both players will remember exactly which holes they lost it on.