Best Ball

2 v 2 match play — your team’s best score counts

The basics

Everyone plays their own ball; on each hole the better ball of each team goes head to head. Win the hole, go 1 UP. Most holes up wins the match — clinch early and it ends “3&2” style.

Dormie: leading by exactly the holes remaining — the leader can no longer lose the match.

⚡How to actually win it

Somebody has to be in play. The single most valuable thing in four-ball is one ball safely in the fairway. Once your partner is in position, you are free to take on the flag — and that freedom is worth more than either of you playing careful golf.

Talk about it on the tee, not after. Good partnerships decide who plays first and who takes the risk before anyone swings. Bad partnerships discover they both bailed out after they've both bailed out.

Putt in the right order. If your partner has the same line from six feet further back, let them putt first — you learn the break for free. This is the most underused edge in the game.

Match play math is different. A hole is a hole whether you win it with a birdie or a bogey. Never spend three shots trying to win a hole you've already lost; concede it and start fresh. Momentum is real and holes are finite.

🔥Why it's the best format for friends

Four-ball is the format that lets a good player and a struggling player genuinely enjoy the same round. Your bad holes get absorbed by your partner, and your one great hole can win a match single-handedly — even if the rest of your card is a mess.

The clinch is the drama. Watching a match go dormie, then hearing "3&2" and knowing it's over with holes still to play, gives the round a finish line that stroke play never has.

And it's the natural home of the Hammer. Double-or-fold on top of match play is the most volatile combination in the app — a match that looked dead can come back on one thrown hammer.

💰The wager

Best Ball settles team against team on holes of difference. Win 3 up at $5 a hole and the losing pair owes $15 between them — $7.50 from each of them, $7.50 to each of you.

Friendly · $2 / holeStandard · $5 / holeGrown folks · $10–20 / hole

Most matches finish somewhere between 1 and 5 holes up, so $5 a hole is typically a $5–25 result. Turn the Hammer on and that arithmetic goes out the window — a doubled, redoubled hole late in a tight match can be worth more than the other seventeen combined.

Mixed handicaps? Play it net.Best Ball takes strokes off the low man, with dots on the card marking exactly which holes give one. A high-handicap partner getting a shot on the toughest hole is frequently the ball that wins it. Battle Tees computes every player's course handicap from their index and the tees they actually played, then keeps gross and net side by side, live, on every phone — so the scratch sees their real number while everyone bets the one that decides the money. It is the difference between a group that bets and a group that talks about betting.

Battle Tees never touches the money. The app scores it, applies your handicaps, and shows exactly who owes whom at the end — one clean list, no arguing on the tailgate. You settle it in the parking lot, the way golfers always have.

In Battle Tees

Your group, your point structure.Every group has its own house rules, and the app bends to them instead of the other way round. In Best Ball that means who partners whom, the handicap allowance, and whether the 🔨 Hammer is live — the single biggest change you can make to how a match feels. Change any of it in setup before the round — the scoring, the standings and the settle math all follow automatically, and the numbers ride along to every phone in the group.

Pick partners in setup; net strokes land off the low man, dots mark them on entry.

Settlement pays by holes of difference. The Match tab shows live status and clinches.

Best Ball is one of the two games that can carry the 🔨 Hammer — the double-or-fold battle modifier. See the Hammer rules for how holes go 2×, 4×, 8×.

If you like Best Ball, try these

⚔️ Play Best Ball in Battle Tees — request beta access Battle Tees — thirteen golf games, one scorecard, settled before the parking lot