Foursomes is a golf format in which two partners share a single ball, taking turns to strike it shot after shot until it is holed. One partner tees off, the other plays the next shot, and they carry on alternating, including on the greens, with the order of tee shots fixed by the hole rather than by who played the last putt.
It sounds simple. It is one of the hardest and most sociable ways to play golf, and it has been around for a very long time. We made a plate of a winter foursomes scene, and we wanted to tell the real story behind it, without the folklore that tends to cling to old games.
How does foursomes golf work?
The idea is easy to state. Two partners play as one side, with a single ball between them. One of you tees off, the other plays the second shot, and you carry on in that order, alternating, including putts. When the hole is done, the tee shots stay alternate too. If one partner drove at the first, the other drives at the second, and so on round the course, whoever happened to hit the last putt on the hole before.
That last point catches people out. Because the order of the tee shots is fixed by the holes, not by who played last, a partner can find themselves hitting the drive at a hole where they would love to be putting. It is part of the game’s character. You cannot pick the holes that suit you.
The modern Rules of Golf, written jointly by the R&A and the USGA, deal with foursomes in a rule of their own, Rule 22 in the current code. It covers the order of play and what happens when the wrong partner plays. We will not try to summarise the penalties here, because they differ between match play and stroke play and are worth reading in the rule itself if you are playing in a competition.
Two words that cause a little confusion are worth clearing up. In Britain, “foursomes” means this alternate shot format. In America you will often hear it called alternate shot, and “Scotch foursomes” is heard there too. Elsewhere, a “foursome” can simply mean a group of four players out together, each with their own ball. If you are booking a tee time and someone says “we’re a foursome”, they almost certainly mean the second sense. If they say “we’re playing foursomes”, they mean the first.
Where does foursomes golf come from?
Here we should be honest about what cannot be known. Nobody can point to the day two golfers first decided to share a ball. Golf grew up on the east coast of Scotland over several centuries, and the earliest days of the game are thinly documented. Anyone who gives you a date and a name for the first foursome is offering more than the record supports, and we would rather leave that out than invent it.
What can be said with more confidence is that foursomes were a familiar form of match in Scotland by the nineteenth century, and that it is commonly said to have been the more popular way of playing a match than four separate balls. Part of the reason is practical. One ball per side means fewer balls on the course, faster play, and fewer people wandering off into the whins at the same time. Part of the reason is that golf was played for stakes, and a challenge match between two pairs was a good way to settle an argument or a wager.
Those challenge matches are where the best-known names of the early professional game appear. Allan Robertson of St Andrews is widely regarded as the first true professional golfer, and Tom Morris, later known as Old Tom, worked with him and played alongside him. The pair are remembered as a formidable partnership in foursomes matches in the middle of the nineteenth century. Robertson died in 1859, and Old Tom went on to Prestwick in 1851 as its keeper of the green before returning to St Andrews. If you read about a particular famous match between them and the Dunn brothers of Musselburgh, check the detail against a proper golf history before repeating it, because accounts of the exact date and stakes vary in the retelling.
A caution about the word “oldest”. Foursomes is old, but we cannot honestly say it is the oldest format, and we would not put it that way. What we can say is that alternate shot belongs to the very early tradition of the game, when a pair of friends or rivals played a single ball against another pair, and that the format has never really gone away.
Why it survived, and where it is still played
Every generation seems to rediscover that foursomes is a fine test of a partnership. There is nowhere to hide. If your partner leaves you in a bunker, you play out of it. If you leave them a long, awkward approach, they play it, and they remember. The format rewards the pair who think about each other’s strengths, who tee up the ball on the side of the fairway that gives the next player their favourite shot, who talk about the wind before the club is chosen.
The proof of that is the place foursomes holds in the great team competitions. The Ryder Cup, whose first official match was played in 1927 at Worcester Country Club in Massachusetts, has always included foursomes in its programme. So do its cousins, such as the Walker Cup for amateurs and the Curtis Cup for women amateurs, and the professional women’s Solheim Cup. The reason is the same in each: a team match is about partnership, and alternate shot asks the most of it.
It is also alive in the everyday game, which is where we like it best. Many clubs run foursomes competitions, often through the shorter days of the year. That is partly a matter of pace: one ball per side keeps a round moving when the light is going, and there is less standing about in the cold. It is partly a matter of company. A winter foursomes is a good excuse to play with someone you do not usually play with, and to find out whether the friendship survives a three-putt.
There are relatives of the format too. In greensomes, both partners tee off, choose the better drive, and then play alternate shots from there. It softens the opening and keeps the rest of the foursomes spirit. If you are introducing someone to the idea for the first time, it is a kinder place to begin.
A few things make a foursomes pair better, and none of them is a secret:
- Agree the tee-shot order before the round, and write down who takes the odd holes and who takes the even ones.
- Choose the partner who drives at the first hole with the par threes in mind, since that decides who tees off at each of them.
- Talk before every shot about where the next player would most like the ball to be.
- Keep the mood light. A missed shot belongs to the side, not to one person.
The scene on our plate
The winter foursomes plate shows this moment: two partners, one ball and a cold day’s golf. It is digital artwork in the style of an engraving. We want to be plain about that. It is not an antique print, it was not cut by hand, and it does not show a real named course. It is our own picture of a game that is centuries old, made to look the way the game’s printed history looks.
What it shows is real enough. Two people who have agreed to share a single ball and the consequences. If that is how you like your golf, or you know someone who does, the plate below is for you.
See it in the collection: The Winter Foursomes design
