Best ball golf: rules, formats, and why it's the team standard.

Best ball is the format serious team golf runs on. The Ryder Cup plays it, your club's team matches play it, and the standard Saturday team Nassau plays it underneath. The idea is almost embarrassingly simple (everyone plays their own ball, count the team's best score) but it produces the exact thing group golf needs: your blowup holes vanish, your partner's hero holes count, and nobody has to pick up their ball and feel like a passenger.

In best ball golf, every player plays their own ball for the entire hole, and the team's score is the best individual score among its players. In the 2v2 match play version, known as four-ball, each side counts its better ball and the hole is won, lost, or halved like any match.

How best ball works

1. Everyone plays their own ball, tee to cup, normal golf.
2. The team counts its best score on each hole. In a 2v2 match, that's "better ball"; with three or four on a team, it's the single best of the group.
3. Score it your way. Match play (holes won and lost), stroke play (total of the best balls), or Stableford points; the best-ball layer works under all of them.

The magic is psychological: once your partner is safely on the green, you're free to fire at the flag. Best ball rewards exactly one thing: somebody on the team playing a great hole.

Best ball vs four-ball: the naming thing

"Four-ball" is the official Rules of Golf name for the 2v2 better-ball match (four balls in play, hence the name); it's what the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup play. "Best ball" in common speech covers both that and the casual 3- or 4-player version where one team counts its best score. Your group can say either; the format is the same idea at different team sizes.

Best ball vs scramble

The most-asked comparison in team golf, and the difference is total:

	Best ball	Scramble
Whose ball do you play?	Your own, all hole	The team's chosen best shot
Bad shots	Still yours to recover	Discarded instantly
Feels like	Real golf with a safety net	Building one perfect hole together
Best for	Matches, leagues, money games	Outings, charity events, mixed groups
Pace	Normal	Fast
Pressable?	Yes (it's a match)	As segments inside a bigger match

Rule of thumb: scramble when the point is the party, best ball when the point is the match. The shamble (scramble drive, then own ball) splits the difference; it's covered in the scramble guide.

Handicaps in best ball

Play it at net and mixed-skill teams get genuinely fair. The common allowances (per the WHS recommendations):

• Four-ball match play: each player takes 90% of course handicap, strokes taken off the lowest player in the match (the low player plays at scratch, everyone else takes the difference).
• Four-ball stroke play: 85% of course handicap.

Strokes fall on the card's stroke-index holes as usual, and the net best ball counts. The 90% shave exists because two balls per side make the higher handicaps disproportionately dangerous; a full-handicap four-ball famously favors the wild pairing.

Variations worth knowing

• 1-2-3 best ball: with four-player teams, rotate how many balls count: one best ball on the first hole, two on the second, three on the third, repeat. Keeps every player relevant on two of every three holes.
• Two best balls: 4-player teams count their best two scores per hole. The standard for competitive four-person team events, since one hot player can't carry alone.
• Aggregate (combined) ball: count both scores per side. Brutal, honest, and rare for a reason.

Best ball as a money game

Best ball is the chassis of the classic foursome money game: a 2v2 team Nassau is almost always best ball underneath, and because it's a true match with a running state, it's fully pressable: go 2 down on any leg and a press opens a fresh match on the remaining holes. Add skins for the individual side action and a foursome has a complete card of games.

Best ball in Press Tracker

Best ball is woven through Press Tracker twice. First, Best Ball is a play format you pick at setup: enter one score per team, or turn on individual scores and enter every player's number, and the app takes each team's better ball for you. Match play, stroke play, or Stableford scoring runs on top, with one-tap presses any time and optional automatic presses at 2 down. Second, Best Ball is the opening segment of the app's BRB format (holes 1-6 of an 18-hole match, 1-3 of a 9-hole), where it runs as its own independently pressable side game alongside the Scramble and Alternate Shot segments and the BRB Total game. Every press, chain, and the running net stay live to the 18th, and friends can spectate the whole thing.

For every other format your foursome might run, start with golf side games.