SHAMBLE
Take the best drive, then everyone plays their own ball in from there. Half scramble, half better ball, and the game that most reliably produces a good time.
A shamble takes the worst part of golf for most amateurs, the tee shot, and removes it. Everyone hits a drive, the side picks the best one, and from there every player plays their own ball into the hole.
What you get is a round where everybody hits a full set of approach shots and putts, so it still feels like golf, but nobody spends the afternoon hacking out sideways. Scores come down four or five shots, pace of play improves noticeably, and the player who cannot keep a driver in play has a genuinely good day.
Shamble or scramble?
The names are close enough that groups mix them up on the tee. The difference is everything after the drive.
In a scramble, the side keeps choosing the best ball on every shot, all the way to the hole. One score goes on the card.
In a shamble, the side chooses only the best drive. After that everyone plays their own ball out, so there are three or four scores on the hole and you pick from them using whatever scoring game you have chosen.
Scramble is the more forgiving. Shamble is the better competition.
How you play it
Everyone tees off, and the side picks the drive it wants. Every player then places their own ball within one club length of that spot, no nearer the hole and never into a better lie, and plays it from there.
As with a scramble, the cut of grass the chosen drive finished on is the cut everybody plays from. Best drive in the bunker means everybody is in the bunker.
The same twist applies: require a minimum number of drives from each player over the round, or one big hitter will provide all eighteen.
How it scores
A shamble leaves every player with their own score, so score it however you like. Better ball, the side's single lowest net, is the common choice and keeps it forgiving. Aggregate, every score added up or the best two or three from a bigger side, makes it a real team test, because now your second-best ball matters too.
Run the front nine, the back nine and the eighteen as separate results either way.
Handicaps
Cut everybody to half their normal strokes. This is the part groups get wrong most often. Every player is playing their approach from the best drive of three or four, which is worth several shots a round on its own; giving out full handicaps on top of that hands the round to the highest handicapper before anyone has hit a putt.
Half strokes, allocated normally on the lowest stroke indexes, keeps it honest. Playing off no handicaps at all is cleaner still if the group is reasonably even.
When to play it
The middle of a trip, when legs are tired and a full round of your own tee shots sounds like work. It is also the kindest game for a crew with one or two genuine beginners in it. They contribute, they are never embarrassed, and they finish in four hours.