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Apple Podcasts:\u00a0Listen Now<\/a><\/p>\n Spotify:\u00a0Listen Now<\/a><\/p>\n Amazon Music:\u00a0Listen Now<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI personally would play it all the time,\u201d he explained. \u201cI think it\u2019s because so much of it represents what golf is about.<\/p>\n \u201cThe conversation is better, because you\u2019re walking with your opponent while your partner is with the other person in their pair. There is a natural conviviality that comes with it.<\/p>\n \u201cI think golf is a ridiculous game by nature. You\u2019re batting a ball around a mown field with a stick at the end of the day. It\u2019s kind of a silly game, a game that\u2019s designed to be giggly.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wear silly clothes to do it, the rules are arcane, and the rest of it. Foursomes is that writ large because, all of a sudden, you\u2019re in the hands of someone else in terms of how the game is going to go. They might hit you into a bush, or an impossible lie, or a bunker, and you\u2019ve just got to accept that.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of that acceptance has got to be humour, because you do end up in some really daft spots that are not of your own making.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just an art. There is a rhythm to it, because the only thing that really matters is: what shot am I leaving my partner?<\/p>\n Irwin added: \u201cIt changes your mindset. I think, \u2018how can I get his ball close to the green\u2019, or \u2018how am I going to create a birdie putt?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cBut what you\u2019re actually thinking is, \u2018I don\u2019t want to leave my partner in a pickle. I need to make sure my partner has got a possible shot\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is definitely a shift in mindset in how you approach the golf course. There is this whole strategic element which I don\u2019t think really features in many formats of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n Golfers walking | Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n Why do club golfers have an issue with foursomes?<\/p>\n But when do you really see it in competitions at lots of clubs? Summer calendars are dominated by fourballs \u2013 whether stroke play or match play.<\/p>\n Your club might stretch to a greensomes, where each partner hits a drive, the best is chosen, and then it\u2019s alternative shot from there. But it\u2019s more often a one-off rather than a regular feature of club competition life.<\/p>\n Our year is chock-full of Stableford competitions. Even Texas Scrambles get more of a run-out. And yet foursomes was once the very essence of the game.<\/p>\n If you go back to the titanic time of Old and Young Tom Morris, they weren\u2019t putting out for points. They were only infrequently playing stroke play. But they were often playing alternate shot.<\/p>\n So why can it be such a tough sell?<\/p>\n My experience is lots of golfers just don\u2019t like the idea of only playing half the shots in a round.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always found that a curious argument given how often core members play. How much of a hardship is it really to just do something different every once in a while.<\/p>\n But players are keen to play their own ball when they come to the club.<\/p>\n Part of the resistance must also be the difficulty of the format. It\u2019s the purest form of the game, in my opinion, because it\u2019s also the most unforgiving.<\/p>\n How many golfers have complete confidence in consistently keeping the ball in play at our level? That\u2019s the primary concern in foursomes. <\/p>\n If you can hit the ball relatively straight and keep your partner out of trouble \u2013 if you can avoid doing anything really daft \u2013 you\u2019re going to come up trumps more often than not.<\/p>\n Personally, I love the tactical elements. I\u2019m only hitting half the shots, but I\u2019m engrossed 100 per cent of the time.<\/p>\n It brings in all the things that rarely come up in fourballs, where the emphasis is always on getting it as close to the hole as possible.<\/p>\n In foursomes, you\u2019re thinking: which ball is the best for us to use? What order are we going to go in? Which holes on the course suit which partner best? What are my partner\u2019s strengths and weaknesses? What are mine?<\/p>\n I love the whole process. I love thinking about the game all the way round. And I love the way a match can turn on a single slice or hook.<\/p>\n I understand this isn\u2019t for everyone and I understand golfers don\u2019t necessarily want to treat a round like it\u2019s a game of chess.<\/p>\n But I\u2019d love to understand why more club golfers don\u2019t always get behind foursomes. You might only hit half the shots, but you\u2019re involved in every one.<\/p>\n For me, that\u2019s as good as golf gets.<\/p>\n What do you think about foursomes?<\/p>\n Do you enjoy playing foursomes, or is it rightly shunned at your club? Let us know in the comments, email me at s.carroll@nationalclubgolfer.com<\/a> or get in touch on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n Main image | Source: Adobe Stock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For some of you, it\u2019s golf as it should be \u2013 a battle of minds as well as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-478267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Golfers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-454958112.jpg\")
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