BETTER BALL
Two players a side, everyone plays their own ball, and only the low net score counts on each hole. The most forgiving partner game in golf, and the one most crews start with.
Better Ball is the format a group reaches for when it wants a real match without punishing anyone for one bad hole. Both partners play their own ball the whole way round. On each hole the side writes down the lower of its two net scores and throws the other away.
That one rule changes how the hole feels. You can take on the flag knowing your partner is safely on the green, and you can walk off a triple bogey having cost your side nothing at all. It is the reason better ball is the Friday-afternoon format at almost every buddies trip: nobody has a miserable day, and the match still comes down to the last few holes.
How you play it
Everyone tees off and plays their own ball into the hole. Nothing about the golf changes. There is no dropping, no picking up, no alternating. The only difference is what goes on the card.
Once both partners are in, the side records its lower net score for the hole. If Jeff makes a net four and Mike a net six, the side's number is four.
Partners should still finish out when the hole is live, but if your partner has made a net three and you are lying six on the green, pick up and walk to the next tee. It is the one place better ball genuinely speeds play up.
How it scores
As a match, the low side number wins the hole, and the side that wins more holes wins the match. Most crews run three results off one round: front nine, back nine and the overall eighteen. A side that gets buried early still has something to play for after the turn.
As stroke play, the side's low net scores are added up across the round and the lower total wins. This is the version to use when more than two sides are competing at once, because a match only works between two.
Handicaps
Two conventions are in common use and both are defensible.
Full strokes is the simpler one: every player gets their whole course handicap, allocated on the lowest stroke indexes first. It is generous to the higher handicapper and it is what most casual groups play.
Ninety per cent of the difference is the competitive standard. Take the lowest course handicap in the match, give that player nothing, and give everyone else 90% of the gap between their handicap and theirs. It keeps a pair with one scratch player and one twenty-four from getting a free win on every par five.
Pick one before the first tee and use it all trip. Switching between rounds is how arguments start.
When to play it
Better ball is the right opener. It is generous, it is fast, and it lets a group with a wide spread of handicaps play a genuinely close match on day one. Save the games that punish a bad hole, like aggregate and alternate shot, for later in the trip when everyone has found their swing.