SINGLES
You and your opponent, no partner to save you. The purest competition in golf and the reason the last day of a Ryder Cup feels the way it does.
Singles is golf with nowhere to hide. One player against one, each playing their own ball, low net score wins the hole. No partner to pick up your triple, no side to average out your bad stretch.
Every other format on this list is designed to soften golf for the group. Singles is the one that does not, which is exactly why it belongs on the last day.
How you play it
Both players play their own ball. Low net score wins the hole; equal net scores halve it. The match is over when one player is further ahead than there are holes left.
That last rule is what gives match play its shape and its language. Three up with two to play is 3&2, and the match ends on the sixteenth green. All square after eighteen is AS. One up standing on the last is a different feeling entirely from being one shot ahead in stroke play, because the shot you take now only has to beat one person.
Play it as match play if you possibly can. Singles as stroke play is just two people playing a round of golf near each other.
Handicaps
Full difference. Take the lower course handicap, give that player nothing, and give the other player the entire gap between them. A five against a seventeen gives the seventeen twelve shots, falling on stroke indexes one through twelve.
This is the format where the stroke index actually matters, hole by hole. Knowing your opponent has a stroke on the next hole changes how you play it, and the two players should agree on where the strokes fall before they tee off rather than discovering it on the ninth green.
Conceding
Match play is the only format where you can give a putt, and it is worth saying out loud how your group handles it at the start of the week. "Inside the leather" is the usual shorthand. Whatever you settle on, be consistent. A crew that gives three-footers all morning and then makes someone hole one on the seventeenth is heading for a bad dinner.
You can also concede a hole, or the whole match. Picking up when your opponent is on the green in two and you are in the trees in three is good manners and good pace.
When to play it
The last round. Every player has a match, every match is worth the same to the team, and the whole board is live at once. The trip gets decided out on the course rather than in a spreadsheet afterwards.
Set the order the night before, over a drink. Half the fun of singles is the draw.