Two Ball, Four Ball, My Ball, Your Ball

Luckily for us, this winter has been very pleasant, with only a few "cold" days (meaning a high in the 60's). And even better, the cold days have been weekdays, but the weekends have been really nice. This will be the second week in a row where the best weather day of the week falls on a weekend.

So, what to do with a beautiful day? Golf! And I did.

But this time, I finally convinced our little foursome to try out match play. If you've ever seen the Ryder cup on TV you'll know what I'm talking about. Match play, or a form of it, is when there are teams of two, and the team members alternate drives and alternate shots.

It looked like fun, but we in America are all about four ball courses, which means there are always four balls in play. Usually this is four individuals all playing their own ball. If you have less than four players you tend to wait around a bit because everyone else has four, and so they generally move along at a slower pace. Match play in general is a two ball game, with two teams playing one ball each.

But we're an inventive lot, so we played teams of two, alternating drives and alternating shots, BUT we each took two strokes every time, and only played the better of the two shots. That way we got in the right number of strokes to equate with four ball golf.

I have to say it was pretty fun. For one thing, my team won on the last hole after mounting a big comeback. But also because when you've only got to shoot every other shot and your teammate is also making mistakes, you don't beat yourself up as much. Yet at the same time, each shot is more significant, because you hold your teammate's fate in your hands as well as your own.

More pressure, more fun, what's not to love?