Scramble, Best Ball, Stableford: Formats Your Group Will Actually Finish

Everybody tees off. The group picks the best of the four shots, and all four players play their next shot from that spot. Repeat until the ball is holed. The team records one score per hole.

This is the correct choice for almost any corporate or charity event. Nobody is ever out of the hole, the round moves quickly because bad shots are simply abandoned, and a beginner still contributes — they will hole a putt or find a fairway at some point and it will matter.

A common variation requires a minimum number of drives from each player, which stops a strong group from ignoring their weakest member entirely. It is a good rule and worth stating before the round rather than arguing about at the turn.

Each player plays their own ball for the whole hole. The team score is the better of the two partners' scores. Two-on-two is the standard arrangement.

This suits a group who all want to play their own golf but would like a blow-up hole covered. It is slower than a scramble because four balls are in play, so it works best when everybody is reasonably competent and picking up when out of the hole is agreed in advance.

Two players share one ball and alternate strokes. One tees off on odd holes, the other on evens, and they alternate through the hole regardless of who played last.

It is the quickest format in golf — one ball per pair — and genuinely enjoyable with a partner you get on with. It is also unforgiving: your partner has to play from wherever you leave it. Not a format for strangers, and not one for a group where somebody is having a bad day.

Instead of counting strokes, you score points per hole against a target: typically two points for a par, three for a birdie, one for a bogey, and nothing for worse. Highest total wins.

This is the single best format for a group with wildly mixed abilities. A catastrophic hole costs you that hole and nothing more, so nobody spends the rest of the round mentally checked out over a nine they made on the fourth. It also naturally encourages picking up, which helps pace.

Stableford is used widely in club competition and works just as well socially. If you are running an event and a scramble feels too much like a party game, this is the alternative.

In skins, each hole is its own prize. Win it outright and you take the skin; tie it and the value carries over to the next hole. It keeps everybody interested to the last green because one good hole late can win the day.

Match play is hole by hole rather than total strokes. You can lose a hole by ten and still be level in the match, which makes it the friendliest competitive format there is. Concessions are allowed and expected — giving a short putt is normal and speeds things up.

Both work well with a small wager and both work fine without one.

Any of these formats can be played with handicaps applied so that abilities are levelled. That is the entire purpose of the handicap system, and it is what lets a 22 and a 6 have a genuine contest.

For a casual group without official indexes, an agreed rough allowance on the first tee works perfectly well. For an organised event, use real handicaps — the World Handicap System publishes how allowances work for each format, and getting it right is what stops the same team winning the outing every year.

State the format and the rules before anybody tees off, including whether players pick up and at what score. Most outing arguments are about something that was never agreed.

Keep the card on a phone rather than a damp paper one — with a scramble or Stableford in particular, running totals are much easier to keep straight digitally, and nobody has to decipher handwriting on the eighteenth.