Watching the President’s Cup this week has brought about a couple of ideas when it comes to playing better-ball team match play (also referred as Four Ball). This format is certainly one of the most common, popular formats in the game, where two players play the other two players in the foursome in a better-ball format. I often play this format when playing matches with the members of Indian Hills.
But the thing that bothers me is that many times I see golfers make, what I consider, strategic errors that reduce their chances of winning the match. Here are two things I see on a regular basis:
The first is a partner making a decision based on what the other partner does. Now this is certainly one of the strategies of this format, but it’s used too frequently, to the detriment of the team. The strategy I like to employ is to make every effort to have both players keep the ball in play, and be in the hole till the end of the hole. What I see is a player, who is in trouble, because his partner is in good shape, take a very high risk shot, screw it up, and now the partner is left on his own. For example on a par 4, let’s say Player A hits his tee ball in the middle of the fairway and Player B hits it in the woods. Now Player B can’t hit the green (unless from he hits a miracle shot) but he can advance the ball and maybe leave himself a 50-yard shot for his third shot. But instead of doing that, he thinks since his partner is in good shape, he’ll “go for it”. He ends up playing hockey in the woods for a couple of shots and now he’s out of the hole, leaving all the pressure on his partner. Now certainly there are times where you need to go for it, maybe when you’re down, playing the last couple of holes in the match, and you have to take risks, but for the most part, play smart and KEEP TWO BALLS IN PLAY as much as possible. The pressure will be much less on both partners throughout the match – which can only help the team’s play.
The other strategic error I see in this format is on the greens. Let’s say that your opponents are in for a par. Your partner has a 5 footer to halve the hole and you have a 25 footer to win the hole. Some teams would choose to have the player with the 5 footer go first, and try to make the putt for the halve, to give the other player a “free run” at the 25-fotter to win the hole. Here’s the problem. If the player misses the 5-footer, now the player with the 25-footer now goes into a defensive mindset because now he has to make sure he two putt to halve the hole. What I think is a better way to approach this particular scenario would be to have the player farther away putt first, knowing that his partner still has a makeable putt to halve the hole. This takes some pressure off the player that’s putting to win the hole and if he does miss, the team now has TWO chances to halve the hole. Of course every situation is different and if the two putts in this example were instead, a 2-footer and a 10-footer, then the other strategy may seem to make more sense – but maybe not if they are both severe downhill left-to-right putts! I think you get my point. Also on the same topic, one of my pet peeves is when a player has a putt to win the hole, and the guy blows the putt 8 feet by the hole, and someone says “at least you went for it and didn’t leave it short”. Went for what? That putt isn’t going in at that speed anyway!
So next time you play a two-on-two better ball match, think about how you approach these two strategies, it might just help you win that $5 Nassau.
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