Ready to Pick Your Team?
Settle Up Golf tracks every match, every point, and every payout — all from your phone.
Two teams. Match play. Every hole counts. Here's how the team formats work and how to run your own version.
The Ryder Cup format — and all its civilian equivalents: Presidents Cup, Solheim Cup, Walker Cup — is built on one core idea: two teams compete across a series of individual and team matches, accumulating points. The team with the most points at the end wins.
Unlike stroke play tournaments where every shot counts toward a total, all Ryder Cup formats use match play scoring. In match play, you win a hole, lose a hole, or halve a hole (tie). The score on a hole is irrelevant beyond win/loss/halve — a double bogey beats a triple just as decisively as a birdie beats a par. This changes strategy fundamentally: protecting a lead matters more than grinding for score, and conceding a hole when you're already out of contention is standard practice.
Each match — whether it's a singles 1v1 or a foursomes 2v2 — is worth 1 point. Win the match: your team gets 1 point. Halve it (finish tied): both teams get 0.5 points. Lose it: the other team gets 1 point. Points pile up across all the matches played across all sessions, and the team that crosses the threshold first (or has more at the end of all play) wins.
One player from each team against each other, playing match play across 18 holes. The most direct format — just two players, no partners, pure head-to-head competition. Singles sessions typically feature the full roster: an 8v8 event would have 8 singles matches played simultaneously, with all 8 points at stake.
Singles are usually saved for the final day, after team chemistry and pairings have been established in the earlier foursomes sessions. A Sunday singles session where 12 matches are all happening simultaneously — with the team scoreboard shifting point by point — is one of the most dramatic formats in golf.
Two players from each team play as partners, but each player plays their own ball throughout. On every hole, the team takes the lower score of the two partners. This is called fourball because four balls are in play on every hole.
Best ball is the most player-friendly format because one partner can have a nightmare hole while the other makes a net par and saves the team. The format rewards pairs where both players are capable of the occasional great hole — not just consistent pairs where neither player ever blows up but neither ever birdies either.
With handicaps, each player's course handicap is applied independently. If Player A is a 12-handicap and Player B is an 18, they both get their full stroke allotment on their respective stroke holes. The better net score on each hole counts for the pair.
The most team-dependent format. Two players from each team share one ball, alternating shots throughout the hole. If Player A tees off, Player B hits the second shot, Player A hits the third, and so on. The format continues to alternate from the tee — the player who holed out on the previous green tees off on the next hole.
Foursomes tests whether partners can function as a single unit. A bad tee shot from one player leaves the other in a difficult position. Chemistry matters enormously: players who overthink each other's shots, or who have incompatible tendencies (one is a fader, the other a drawer), will struggle. Players who trust each other and have similar course management instincts will make the format work.
Handicaps in foursomes: take the average of the two partners' handicaps and divide by two (or use a combined approach agreed upon in advance). The team gets fewer strokes than in fourball because only one ball is in play — but the allocation still follows the stroke index for the course.
Every match, regardless of format, is worth exactly 1 point. Here's how match status and points work:
Match terminology to know:
You don't need 24 tour professionals or a television crew. The format scales to any group size as long as you have an even number of players split evenly between teams.
For a one-day event with 8 players, a common structure is:
For a two-day event with 8 players:
The team that reaches 4.5 points wins. In the two-day version with 8 points, the team reaching 4.5 takes it.
Captains pick the pairings and lineup order. This is a genuine strategy decision — who plays foursomes together, which singles players anchor vs. lead, who gets the toughest opposing matchup. It's one of the most fun parts of running one of these events.
Team events like this work best with a team wager — one side bets the other on the final point total. A $20 per player team wager means the winning team collects from every player on the losing team. If there are 4 players per side and Team 1 wins, each Team 1 player collects $20 from one Team 2 player (or you total it up and settle as lump sums).
You can also run individual match wagers alongside the team points. Each match has its own $10 side bet, paid out directly between the match participants when the match is over. This gives every player a direct financial stake in their own match in addition to the team competition.
Some groups add a skins overlay on top — skins between all players in a match, running concurrently with the match play result. The two formats coexist cleanly and add another payout dimension for players who win holes but still lose the match.
Tracking 8 simultaneous matches across two sessions, keeping the team scoreboard live, and settling everything at the end — that's a lot to manage on a whiteboard. Settle Up Golf's Tour Cup format handles all of it: set up the teams, configure the matches and formats, and every player tracks their own scorecard. The team standings update automatically. When the last singles match closes out, the settlement screen shows every payout. No more IOUs at the 19th hole.
See the setup guide: How to Run a Tour Cup Tournament in Settle Up Golf →
Settle Up Golf tracks every match, every point, and every payout — all from your phone.