Four-Ball Golf Format: Rules, Scoring & How to Run It in Your League

Four-ball (also written 4-ball, 4 ball or fourball) is a team format where two players each play their own ball on every hole, and the lower of the two scores counts as the team’s score. Four balls are in play at once — two per side — which is where the name comes from. If you’ve watched the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup on TV, you’ve seen four-ball. It’s the format those events are built around, and it translates directly to league play.

How Four-Ball Works

Each player on a two-person team plays the hole from tee to green with their own ball. After both team members hole out — or pick up when they’re out of the hole — the lower individual score becomes the team score. The higher score doesn’t factor in. If one player makes a 4 and the partner makes a 7, the team score is 4. The 7 might as well not exist.

Four-ball can be played as stroke play (cumulative team score over 18 holes) or match play (hole by hole). Stroke play four-ball works like a regular tournament — add up the team’s best-ball scores and put the total on the leaderboard. Match play four-ball is what the Ryder Cup uses, and it’s the version that produces the best stories in a league setting.

Four-Ball Match Play Scoring

In match play, each hole is a standalone contest. The team with the lower best-ball score wins the hole and goes “1 Up.” Tied scores halve the hole and the match status stays where it is. The scoreboard reads “All Square” or a number of holes up or down.

A match can end early. If a team is up by more holes than remain — 3 Up with 2 to play — the match is over. They win “3 and 2.” If the match reaches the final hole all square, that hole decides it.

Here’s a sample match play scorecard for a 9-hole four-ball match:

Hole	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Player A	5	4	3	5	4	6	4	3	5
Player B	4	6	4	4	5	4	5	4	4
Team 1	4	4	3	4	4	4	4	3	4
Player C	4	3	5	5	3	5	5	5	5
Player D	5	4	4	4	5	4	4	4	3
Team 2	4	3	4	4	3	4	4	4	3
Status	AS	T2 1Up	AS	AS	T2 1Up	T2 1Up	T2 1Up	AS	T2 1Up

The match goes back and forth. Team 2 wins holes 2 and 5, Team 1 answers on 3 and 8, but Team 2 closes it out on 9 with Player D’s 3 to win 1 Up. Notice how Player A’s 3 on hole 8 kept Team 1 alive even though Player B made a 4 — that’s the engine of four-ball. One partner can carry the other when it matters.

Handicaps in Four-Ball

Four-ball with handicaps uses the same stroke index your course already has — the ranking of holes by difficulty printed on the scorecard. The question is how to apply those strokes.

The most common method: take the lowest handicap in the match as the base and set it to zero. Every other player gets the difference between their handicap and the base, applied to the hardest holes by stroke index.

Example: Player A is a 6, Player B is a 14, Player C is an 8, Player D is a 18. Player A is the base (set to 0). Player B gets 8 strokes, Player C gets 2, and Player D gets 12. Those strokes land on the holes ranked hardest by the course’s stroke index.

There’s a counterargument to this method. Some commissioners prefer giving every player their full allotment of strokes rather than subtracting from the base. The math produces different outcomes: the base-subtraction method keeps strokes on the hardest holes where they arguably matter most. The full-allotment method spreads strokes onto easier holes for higher handicaps, which can shift hole results. Neither is wrong — pick the method that fits your group and stick with it.

Strategy and Rules That Change in Four-Ball

Four-ball has a few rules that trip up players who are used to regular stroke play tournaments, and a commissioner who doesn’t communicate them upfront will spend the round answering questions on the course.

Order of Play

In stroke play, most leagues play “Ready Golf” — whoever is ready, go. In match play four-ball, the team farthest from the hole plays first. The critical detail: “farthest out” belongs to the team, not the individual. This means the closer of the two teammates can play first when it’s strategically useful.

Say one teammate is putting for par from 6 feet and the other is putting for birdie from 10 feet. The par putt goes first. If it drops, the birdie putt can charge the hole aggressively — the team already has par locked in. If the par putt had waited, the birdie putter might have to lag it close for a safe par instead of going for it.

The same logic applies to reading putts. A teammate whose ball is on a similar line can putt first and show the break.

Conceded Putts

Match play allows conceded putts (gimmes). A team can concede an opponent’s putt at any time — they don’t need to ask, and the concession can’t be refused or taken back. This is a real tactical lever. Conceding a teammate’s par putt quickly can speed up play and keep rhythm, but there’s a flip side: conceding too generously gives away strokes you might have won.

Picking Up

A player whose ball can’t help the team on a hole can pick up without penalty. If your partner already made a 4 and you’re lying 5 in a bunker, pocket the ball and move on. This keeps pace of play reasonable — four-ball can drag if all four players grind out every hole regardless of team standing.

Running Four-Ball for a Large Group

Four-ball’s complexity scales fast when you go from one match to a full cup-format event with 20 or 40 players. The format itself is simple to explain in a sentence, but the operational details stack up.

Communication is the biggest challenge. Players who’ve spent the entire season playing stroke play with Ready Golf rules will walk onto the first tee of a four-ball match and immediately play out of turn, forget that gimmes are in play, or not understand how the match status works. A rules sheet isn’t optional — it’s the difference between running a clean event and fielding radio calls on every hole.

Handicap math has to be done before the round. Each match needs its own stroke allocation calculated from the four players’ handicaps. With 10 matches running simultaneously, that’s 40 individual handicap calculations and 10 sets of stroke distributions. Software that calculates handicaps for each match takes that work off the commissioner.

Scorekeeping requires attention. Someone — the players or a central scorer — has to track match status hole by hole, not just total scores. A team that wins a hole doesn’t add a stroke to their total; they move the match status one step in their direction. This is a different mental model from stroke play, and it’s where scoring mistakes happen.

How We Run It on the Mulligan Tour

The Mulligan Tour runs four-ball as part of two cup-format events: the Presidents Cup and the Commissioners Cup.

The Presidents Cup uses 6-man teams and plays three 9-hole rounds — one each of Four-Ball, Alternate Shot, and Scramble. Each round has three matches. The captain selects pairings for each round and can match them against the opposing team’s pairings, so there’s a layer of strategy before anyone tees off.

The Commissioners Cup is the big one — modeled directly on the Ryder Cup. 10-man teams play a full weekend: Five Four-Ball matches and five Alternate Shot matches the first day, five Alternate Shot and five Four-Ball the second day, and ten Singles matches on the final day. In the Commissioners Cup, pairings are a blind draw — no strategic matchup, pure luck of the draw.

Captains pick their pairings in both events, and it matters. Chemistry between partners is real in four-ball. Two steady players who keep the ball in play will beat a pair that’s longer but wilder, because four-ball rewards having at least one clean score on every hole.

The Stories

Four-ball match play produces moments that get talked about for years. In 2021, a team went 3 Down with 4 holes to play — functionally dead. They won the last four holes straight to take the match. Four consecutive holes where both players on the trailing team found something, and both players on the leading team couldn’t close it out. That’s the kind of swing that only happens in match play.

The most infamous moment came in 2018. An All Square match, second-to-last hole. A player on one team hit an approach shot to tap-in distance — the kind of shot that effectively wins the hole the moment it lands. But he hit out of turn. The opposing team, within their rights under match play rules, made him replay the shot. He skulled the rehit over the green, the other team won the hole, and they closed out the match on the next hole.

It was an honest mistake. The Mulligan Tour plays Ready Golf in regular stroke play tournaments all season long — whoever is ready, go. But four-ball match play follows strict order of play: the team farthest out goes first. That one rule difference, not communicated clearly enough before the round, cost a team the match with a shot that was already inside 3 feet.

Running Four-Ball in LeaderBoard Caddie

Four-ball in a cup-format event creates a math and logistics problem that compounds with every match. Each match needs individual handicap calculations, match-status tracking hole by hole, and the results have to roll up into an overall team score across multiple formats and multiple days.

LeaderBoard Caddie handles both cup formats — the smaller Presidents Cup structure and the full Ryder Cup-style Commissioners Cup. It calculates handicap stroke allocations for each match, tracks match status in real time, and rolls results into the team scoreboard automatically. The commissioner’s job becomes running the event, not running the spreadsheet.

FAQ

Is four-ball the same as best ball?

Mostly, but not exactly. Four-ball is the formal name for two partners who each play their own ball, with the lower score counting. Best ball is the looser term. It covers teams of any size, including four-player teams, and is played as stroke play against the field as often as match play. If someone describes a two-person best ball match, they are describing four-ball.

Can a player pick up their ball in four-ball?

Yes. If your partner has already secured a score that your ball can’t beat, you can pick up without penalty. This is expected and encouraged — it keeps pace of play manageable. In match play specifically, once the hole’s outcome is decided, there’s no reason to keep playing.

What happens if both players on a team make the same score?

The team score is that number. If both partners make a 4, the team score is 4. There’s no bonus for both players scoring well on the same hole — only the lower score counts, and a tie between partners just means either one would have produced the same team result.

How many strokes does a higher handicap get in four-ball?

The standard method takes the lowest handicap in the match and uses it as the base (zero). Every other player receives strokes equal to the difference between their handicap and the base, applied to the hardest holes by the course’s stroke index. Some leagues give every player their full handicap instead — the debate comes down to whether higher handicaps should receive strokes on easier holes (full allotment) or only on the hardest ones (base subtraction).

How long does a four-ball match take?

A four-ball match with four players takes roughly the same time as a regular foursome — about 4 hours for 18 holes or 2 hours for 9. The format can actually play faster than stroke play because players pick up when they’re out of a hole and conceded putts eliminate short tap-ins. The bottleneck is usually players unfamiliar with the format stopping to discuss rules mid-hole.

Can you play four-ball as stroke play?

Yes. Stroke play four-ball works like a standard tournament — two-person teams, each playing their own ball, lower score on each hole, and the team with the lowest total wins. It’s simpler to run than match play because you don’t track match status hole by hole. The PGA Tour uses stroke play four-ball in some team events. Most recreational leagues lean toward match play four-ball because the hole-by-hole drama is what makes the format worth running.

What’s the difference between four-ball and a scramble?

In a scramble, all team members hit from the same spot — the best shot is selected after each stroke, and everyone plays from there. In four-ball, each player plays their own ball the entire hole. Scramble is more collaborative and forgiving; four-ball tests each player individually but only counts the better result. A scramble can accommodate teams of 2, 3, or 4; four-ball is always two players per team.

What’s the difference between four-ball and alternate shot?

In alternate shot (foursomes), two players share a single ball and take turns hitting it — one tees off on odd holes, the other on even holes, and they alternate shots in between. In four-ball, both players play their own ball on every hole. Alternate shot is more intense because a bad shot directly affects your partner’s next play. Four-ball gives each player independence — a bad hole from one partner can be covered by the other.