Best Ball (Four-Ball)

Two names, one game. Everyone plays their own ball the whole way, and on each hole the team counts only its best score. Your partner's blow-up costs the team nothing — as long as you covered them.

Best ball or four-ball — which is it?

Both. Four-Ball is the official rulebook name — it's what the Ryder Cup calls it, from the four balls in play in a two-versus-two match. Best ball is what everyone actually says on a Saturday morning. Same format: own ball, best score counts. (Informally, "best ball" also stretches to teams of three or four; the official term for that is best-ball-of-four, but nobody's checking.)

Match play or stroke play — pick one

Once you're counting the team's best score per hole, you still have to decide how the round is won, and this genuinely changes who wins:

• Match play (the classic) — two teams, hole by hole: better team score wins the hole, most holes wins the match. Margins don't matter.
• Stroke play — add up the team's best scores across all 18; lowest total wins. Margins are everything.

Team A nicks 10 holes by 1 stroke each.
Team B wins 5 holes by 3 strokes each. 3 holes halved.

Match play  →  Team A wins, 10–5
Stroke play →  Team B wins by 5 (15 strokes gained vs 10)

The handicap allowances

Because a team only needs one good ball per hole, full handicaps would over-reward high handicappers (they produce more wild swings — and in best ball, only the good swings count). The USGA's answer is a reduced allowance:

• Four-ball match play: 90% — the lowest course handicap in the group plays at scratch, and everyone else gets 90% of their difference from that player.
• Four-ball stroke play: 85% — each player simply plays off 85% of their own course handicap.

Exact course handicaps: 5.2 · 9.8 · 12.4 · 17.6
Low player (5.2) plays scratch. The rest:
  9.8 − 5.2 = 4.6  × 90% = 4.14 → 4 strokes
 12.4 − 5.2 = 7.2  × 90% = 6.48 → 6 strokes
 17.6 − 5.2 = 12.4 × 90% = 11.16 → 11 strokes

Note the percentages are applied to the exact (unrounded) handicaps and rounded once at the end — the order matters. More in the handicaps guide.

Three or more teams?

The Best Ball format proper is two teams. Got three or four teams? Play Stroke Play with team scoring set to best per hole — identical ball-counting, totals decide it, any number of teams. (In that mode players use their full handicaps, casual-round style, rather than the tournament allowances.)