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Games for Twosomes, Threesomes and Foursomes Pick Up Sticks For each hole a player loses (play is match play), he may take one club in his opponent's bag out of play. The opponent may reclaim his clubs one at a time, in any order he wants, as he loses holes back. Half-handicaps should be used. Players should decide before the match whether they can take away putters. Most choose to give the putter immunity, because it's too much of a handicap not to have one. Accomplished players can work around the absence of other clubs by choking up, hitting fades, and so forth, but it's almost comical not to have a puttter. I don't agree, though. You can putt pretty well with a sand wedge or a one- or two-iron. Fuzzy Zoeller once broke his putter in a tantrum, and he was forced to finish his round using a wedge for a putter, since PGA rules prohibit club replacement. And Ben Crenshaw once finished a round by putting with his two-iron. In any event, assuming the putter gets immunity, what are the best clubs to take from your opponent? Though many golfers immediately pick the driver, it's probably the worst club to select. You'd be doing most players a favor by making them tee off with a three-wood or a two-iron. Obviously, a lot depends on your opponent's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the specific challenges of the holes immediately ahead. In general, the sand wedge is the best club to take away. Many good players use it for nearly every shot inside 100 yards. Also, it's tough to recover from greenside bunkers using any club but a sand wedge. On the other hand, if the player carries a lob wedge, taking his sand wedge won't matter much. A variation is not to use "stroke" handicaps at all but instead have a club handicap from the start. The suggested method is for the higher-handicapped player to remove one club from his opponent's bag for every two strokes in their handicap differential. So if player A has an eight-handicap, and player B has a 14, player B can remove three clubs from player A's bag. The game then progresses in the same manner described above, with clubs coming in and out of play with won and lost holes. Pick Up Sticks may seem a silly game, but I highly recommend it for beginners. Many of the golf greats learned to play with incomplete bags. The game forces you to create shots, such as "punch fading" a four-iron to hit it as far as a six, or hitting a "running hook" with a six to send it as far as a four. We all tend to get lazy, carrying specialty clubs for every possible lie (yes, I mean you with the "Divine Nine"), so Pick Up Sticks is a healthy and fun diversion. No Alibis is also known as "Criers & Whiners" because it's the ideal game to play with those prone to such behavior - the sort who always follows rounds with comments like, "if I could just have that one shot back when the wind came up..." This game will shut them up. On par-three holes, the wolf is the second-closest to the pin after the first shot. If there's a tie, players decide whether the stakes carry to the next hole. Any amount carried over goes to the next winning "team", whether it's the wolf or the hunters. Carryovers make Wolf a more interesting game. Large pots make it advantageous to be the wolf, because the wolf doesn't split the pot. Thus, strategy off the tee becomes important, and players will jockey to become the wolf. Honor off the tee is established by the net score on the previous hole. Play with full handicaps. To play, pairs alternate shots from tee to green until the ball is in the hole, although one player should drive all the even holes and the other the odd. Use one-half of combined handicaps. You must put some thought into who drives which holes. Do the holes that require a good carry tend to be odd or even? Put your long hitter on those tees. Do the par-threes fall on the odds or evens? Put your target hitter on them. The Scotch Foursome is an excellent game. It really brings a team together, for better or worse. It's also a fast game, as players tend to walk ahead of their partners in a leapfrog fashion. The popularity of this format is one of the main reasons golf is played faster overseas, where a quick pace is de rigueur. Most players in the U.S. could use a dose of this mentality. At the tee, one pair makes a "bid" on how many strokes (play net or gross) it will take their team to complete the hole. For instance, if they bid 10, they are betting they can play the hole in 10 strokes or fewer combined. The bet is typically a dollar a player. The other team then has three options: Selected score is a fun, leisurely format to use over a weekend, although I've seen some fanatics pack it all into one day. Medal Play Medal Play is the most serious and least forgiving tournament format (no gimmies!), so it's often used for club championships. Handicaps are not used during play, but they are used to create teams. All players should split into four handicap groups (lowest to highest). Use four hats, and pick a player from each hat to form a team. "A" and "B" players should tee off from the back markers. A Scramble usually calls for a shotgun start, preceded by lunch or followed by dinner. Seven-or-eight-under is usually the score to beat. The flags should be provided on the first tee by the tournament director. Each participant should have his name taped to his flag. This way, as players make their way through the back nine, they can see where others bit the dust. If a player finishes all 18 holes before using his total strokes, he should either keep playing until he's out of strokes or stop. Under the first option, the winner is the player who plants his flag farthest on the course. Under the second, the winner is whoever has the most strokes remaining after 18 holes. The reason two-thirds handicap is used, though, is so most people will finish somewhere inside of regulation. One additional rule: You can't plant a flag past a hole that you haven't completed. In other words, if you're five feet short of a green with one stroke left, you can't blast the ball with your 2-iron onto the next fairway. Also, if the farthest two players both finish on the same green, the winner is the golfer closer to the hole. A flag tournament is essentially Stroke Play with a handicap, but the twist makes it a little more interesting. The USGA notes, appropriately, that American flags should never be used as markers. One variation: The golfer with the pink ball is automatically disqualified if he loses it. This is perhaps too harsh, so I don't recommend it. Players should have a reason to stay interested, after all. Another, less harsh, variation: Keep the overall net score for the pink ball separately, and give a prize to the team with the best pink ball score. If a team loses the pink ball, it's out. This makes for considerable camaraderie (and tension) if you're playing on a course with a lot of water. Players shoot for a set amount per point, often a dollar. Thus, a player accumulating three trouble points owes each of his opponents three dollars. Points are assigned as follows: Trouble is an excellent game for the intermediate player. Often, such players are feeling pretty smug as their handicaps drop, and they need to be taken down a notch or two. Trouble encourages smart golf (again, not to be confused with fun golf) and might just produce some surprisingly low round for all those would-be daredevils out there. Then, based on their performances, players receive positive points as follows:
Murphy Scruffy Garbage Arnies Barkies Sandies Splashies Copyright 1995 by Scott Johnston; excerpted from The Complete Book of Golf Games with the permission of the publisher.
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