SCRAMBLE

A scramble is the format for the round nobody is fresh for. Every player hits a shot, the side picks the best one, and everyone plays their next from there. Repeat until somebody holes out. One score goes on the card for the whole side.

It is the most forgiving game in golf, and that is the point. A twenty-four handicap who tops three drives in a row still contributes the putt that wins the hole. Nobody is ever out of a hole, nobody holds the group up looking for a ball, and the scores are low enough that everyone leaves happy.

How you play it

Everyone on the side tees off. The side picks the shot it likes best, which is not always the longest, and every player then plays their own ball from that spot.

When you move to the chosen spot, you may place the ball within one club length, never nearer the hole. On the green it is one scorecard length. What you may not do is improve the lie: if the chosen drive is in a bunker, everybody plays from the bunker; if it finished in the rough, nobody gets to tee it up on the fairway.

Carry on that way until one player on the side holes the ball. That is the side's score.

A twist worth adding: require a minimum number of drives from each player, two or three each over eighteen. Without it a strong side will use one player's tee shot all day and the other three become putters. With it, the weakest driver has to come through at some point, which is where the good stories come from.

How it scores

One number per side per hole, so both match play and stroke play are straightforward. In a match, the low side score wins the hole. In stroke play the side's scores add up and the lowest total wins. As with every format here, run the front nine, the back nine and the eighteen as three separate results so a bad start does not kill the afternoon.

Handicaps

Where it is fair to do so, play a scramble off no handicaps at all. Four players choosing the best of four shots are collectively a much better player than any of them individually, and applying individual strokes on top of that produces scores that are meaningless.

If the sides are genuinely mismatched and you need something, keep it simple: average each side's course handicaps, and give the difference between the two averages to the higher side. So a side averaging twelve against a side averaging six plays off six strokes; the other side plays off none. Loop does this arithmetic for you when a round is set as a scramble.

When to play it

Second round of a thirty-six hole day. The round after a long lunch. The last day when half the group is flying out. Any time the object is that everybody enjoys themselves rather than that the best player wins, a scramble is the answer.