Fourballs game is far from fantastic... let’s get rid of it
WHAT’S the difference between foursomes and fourballs golf? Here’s a simpler explanation than the one you’d normally read. one is tension-filled and exciting; the other goes on and on and is well past its sell-by date.
Is there any chance this year’s Ryder Cup might be the last to feature fourballs, that it will be gone by the time of the match in Rome and the 60th anniversary of its introduction in 1963?
After another two series featuring six-hour matches at Whispering Straits in September, with all the usual struggles to get everything done by darkness on the first two days, the clamour for change will hopefully be deafening.
yet another example of how tired the format has become was on offer at the Zurich Classic of new orleans last week. Let’s applaud the sponsors for trying something different and a week of two-man team golf — won by Australians Marc Leishman and Cameron Smith — rather than the staple 72-hole stroke-play format. But the two days of fourballs just dragged the event down and neutered the two days of foursomes. By the end, even golf addicts on social media were pleading for mercy.
of course, there’s a massive difference between tweaking that event and trying something different at a sporting occasion as big as the Ryder Cup.
It’s also only right to point out the huge contribution that fourballs has made to the growth and success of the biennial dust-up. you only have to go back to Ian Poulter’s heroics on the Saturday afternoon to set up the miracle at Medinah in 2012 for evidence.
The trouble is, it now takes so long it’s at risk of undoing all the good. Back in 1963, fourballs matches were completed inside four hours, but these days it takes that length of time to play 12 holes.
you couldn’t have asked for a more dramatic scenario than the one that unfolded at the last Solheim Cup at Gleneagles, but on the Saturday night most people were past caring, it took so long to materialise.
It doesn’t have to be a radical change, either. Alongside the still-fabulous foursomes, why not switch to greensomes for two series of matches, whereby both players drive off and then the best tee shot is selected. That way you’d retain some of the daring element of fourballs play and get rid of all of the tediousness.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, we know, and the obvious danger is that matches won’t finish in a day, either, if we’ve still got fourballs in 2023.