Team match and Las Vegas re-pairing

Two sides, one hole at a time. And a variant that reshuffles the partnerships on every tee so nobody is stuck with the same partner for eighteen holes.

The basic team match

Split the group into two sides — traditionally Blue and White in Korean club play — and score each hole as a side. The two common scoring methods:

Better ball — the side records its lowest individual score on the hole. Forgiving, and it lets a partner having a bad day play freely without costing the team anything.
Combined — both scores are added together. Every player matters on every hole, which is more tense and much less forgiving.

Better ball is the right default for social rounds. Combined scoring is better when the four players are close in ability and want a genuinely competitive match.

Settling every hole

Traditional team matches are scored as a match — holes up and down — and settle once at the end. We recommend settling each hole instead: the winning side collects the agreed amount from the losing side immediately, and the ledger closes. Halved holes pay nothing.

The advantage is that the running total is always final. Nobody has to remember whether the press on the twelfth was ever conceded, and a player who has to leave after fifteen holes is already settled up for what they played.

Per-hole settlement also makes team play compatible with side games. You can run a team match and Skins simultaneously without the two settlements interfering, because each resolves independently on the same set of scores.

Las Vegas: new partners every hole

The complaint about fixed teams is that one unlucky draw can define the whole round. Las Vegas fixes that by re-pairing the four players on every hole, so over eighteen holes you partner each of the other three roughly equally and the result reflects your own play far more than your draw.

The standard rotation with four players uses the three possible pairings, cycling through them: A+B vs C+D, then A+C vs B+D, then A+D vs B+C, then back to the first. A common variant instead pairs by the previous hole's standing — the leader with the last-placed player, the second with the third — which actively works against a runaway winner.

Whichever rotation you use, the important property is that the pairings must actually change even when the previous hole was tied or unplayed. A standings-based rotation that stalls on a tied hole will silently keep the same partners for several holes, which defeats the point. Falling back to the fixed three-set cycle whenever standings do not separate the field keeps the rotation honest.

Reading the pairings on the card

Because partnerships change hole by hole, the card needs to show who was paired with whom. We display the pairing as initials on each hole — for example "AD+BC" meaning players A and D formed one side against B and C. Without that, reconstructing a disputed hole after the round is impossible.

Handicaps in team play

For better ball, allocate strokes individually by stroke index and take the lower net score. For combined scoring, do the same and add the net scores. Many clubs reduce handicap allowance in four-ball formats — 85 or 90 percent is typical — because two players each having a good hole produces a lower team score than either would post alone.

Larger groups

Six players — two sides of three, best two scores count on each hole.
Eight players — two sides of four, best two or best three, depending on how much you want an individual bad hole to matter.
Multiple groups — run each foursome in its own room and combine the net scores into a single leaderboard, which is how a full field tournament is scored.