2-man best ball: two players, one score.
Two golfers, one score. You both play your own ball, the better net score counts, and your team plays the whole field on a live leaderboard.
Two golfers, one score. You both play your own ball, the better net score counts, and your team plays the whole field on a live leaderboard.
You and a partner each play your own ball all the way to the hole. Whoever has the lower net score on that hole, that's the team's score. The other one gets thrown away and nobody has to feel bad about it.
Do that eighteen times and you have a team total — which then plays the whole field, not one opposing team. Every pair in the outing is on the same leaderboard, so it doesn't matter who you're grouped with or what time you go off.
In GolfApp it's a stroke play game set to Pair vs Field. That's the competition setting that turns the round into two-man teams against everyone.
The appeal is simple: it takes the pressure off without taking the golf away. You still have to hole out yourself for your score to count — unlike a scramble, where you can hide behind your partner's tee shot all day — but any single blow-up hole just quietly disappears as long as your partner made a par.
Best ball or better ball? Same thing. "Better ball" is technically the right word for two players and "best ball" for three or more, but the two names have been used interchangeably for about a century and nobody is going to stop you.
Everyone enters their own raw score, exactly as they would in any round. GolfApp applies the handicap strokes, works out which ball counted, and marks it on the card.
Work through a couple of them and the whole system falls out. On the 4th, a par 4 and the hardest hole on the card, Greg makes 4 with a stroke for a net 3 while Gordon makes 5 — green box on Greg, team score 3. On the 8th Greg makes a 2 on a par 3 and there's nothing to discuss. And on the 1st they both make 4 with no strokes, so both go yellow: identical net scores, either could have been the ball.
Out in nine, Greg shot 39 and Gordon shot 37 — but the team went round in 30. That gap is the entire point of the format.
Everybody puts in the same buy-in, and that builds the purse. You then decide how the purse is carved up with allocations — how much first place takes, how much second takes, and as many places deep as you want to pay.
Say six players go out as three teams at twenty dollars a head. That's a $120 purse. Pay $96 to the winners and $24 to second, and the leaderboard does the rest:
Teams outside the paid places show $0 rather than being hidden, so everybody can see exactly where they finished and what it was worth. No envelope, no maths in the car park.
And it's live. Thru tells you how far along each team is, so a group on the 12th can see exactly what the group ahead posted and know what they need. That's the bit a paper sheet in the pro shop can never do.
If you're running a golf trip or an outing and you only want to think about one format, make it this one.
Two-man best ball is the rare game that works for everybody at once. A high handicapper is never holding the team back for long, because a single bad hole is covered by their partner. A low handicapper still has something to shoot at, because the good scores are what wins it. And nobody is eliminated at any point — you're playing a field, not an opponent, so there's no moment where your day is over.
This is what makes it the flagship rather than just a good format. Best ball scores off the same raw numbers as every other game in GolfApp, which means you can run:
Everyone enters one score per hole and all three settle themselves. Your partner might lose the best ball and still walk away up on the day because he took the skin on the 14th and won his Nassau. That's three completely separate ways to have a good round, off one card, with nothing to reconcile afterwards.
It's the same idea behind the whole golf betting app — and it's why the trip guide starts here too. Mixing games covers the mechanics.
Best ball is one of the few games where Full is the right default rather than Net Off Low.
The reason is what your team is playing against. In a match you're up against one opponent, so measuring everyone off the lowest handicap in the group gets you to the same answer with fewer strokes floating around. Here your team is playing an entire field of other teams — so every player needs their own strokes, measured the same way as everybody else's, or the teams aren't comparable.
Set it once at setup and the dots appear on the card wherever the strokes fall.
Two golfers play as a team, each playing their own ball for the whole hole. The lower of their two scores becomes the team's score for that hole, and the other is thrown away. Add up eighteen of those and you have the team's total, which goes on a leaderboard against every other team in the field.
Nothing — they're two names for the same format, and golfers use them interchangeably. "Better ball" is strictly more correct with two players, since better compares two things and best compares three or more, but nobody will pull you up on it.
In best ball you each play your own ball all the way to the hole and then take the lower score. In a scramble you both hit, pick the better shot, and then both play again from that spot. Best ball is the real test — you have to finish a hole yourself for it to count — while a scramble is more forgiving and faster for a big outing.
Almost. Four-ball is the same idea — two players a side, lower ball counts — but it's usually played as match play, one team against one other team. 2-man best ball here is stroke play: your team's total plays the entire field on a leaderboard rather than one opponent.
Each player gets strokes on the holes where their handicap says they should, and it's their net score that competes to be the team's ball. GolfApp offers None, Net Off Low, or Full, and Full is the default here — with teams playing a whole field rather than one opponent, everyone wants their own strokes rather than a figure measured off the lowest handicap in the group.
A yellow box means both partners posted the same net score on that hole, so either one could have been the counting ball. A green box means that player's score is the one that counted. It's there so nobody has to squint at the card wondering why their 4 did or didn't get used.
Everyone puts in a buy-in and that builds a purse. You then set allocations for the finishing positions — first place gets this much, second gets that much, and as many places as you want to pay. GolfApp does the arithmetic and shows each team what they've won right on the leaderboard, with teams outside the money showing $0.
Yes, and that's the reason to make this the main event. Best ball scores off the same numbers as everything else, so individual Nassaus and a field-wide skins game can run on top of it from one scorecard. Everybody is playing three games at once without entering anything twice.
As many as you like. It scales from two teams up to a full outing, because the teams aren't playing each other directly — every team is playing the field, so groups never need to be paired off or sent out in any particular order.
GolfApp scores 2-man best ball free for life — counting ball worked out hole by hole, handicap strokes applied, a live leaderboard for the whole field, and the purse split according to your allocations. No subscription and no premium tier.
2 Best BallThe four-man version, where the two lowest scores of four count instead of one of two.
NassauThe individual match to run on top of your team game. Front, back, total, with automatic presses.
SkinsA prize on every hole, across the entire field. The other half of a good outing.
How to organise tee times, run games across multiple days, and settle up at the end.