Pairings for Two-Man Best Ball

[rmgators]

I'm setting up pairings for a two-man best ball and wanted to get some thoughts on pairing strategy.

My team is pretty evenly distributed among the following handicap buckets:
1: 0-5
2: 5-10
3: 10-15
4: 15-20

Would you typically try to match 1's with 4's and 2's with 3's?

[Open-Faced Club Sandwedge]

I don't see any other fair way to do it. Match the best player with the worst player, the second best with the second worst, and so on.

I guess if you have 20 people, then number 12 might be thinking he got shafted by being paired with number 9, when number 18 gets paired with number 3. He might feel that number 18 was rewarded for being the weaker player. But you can't make a pairing strategy that rewards the better players with better partners, without making the competition totally lop-sided.

The only other "fair" way you could do it is by random draw for partners. Then it's up to chance. But odds are someone in the bottom 5 people will get paired with someone else in the bottom 5 people, and likewise in the top 5, and it might not seem so fair once the draw is done.

-Andrew

[beisenhauer]

You could combine the two notions: both a random draw and pairing better players with worse. Divide everybody into "top half" and "bottom half" by handicap. Everyone in the top half puts a ball (identifiable) into a hat or a bag, and the players in the bottom half draw a ball at random from the hat. Whoever the ball belongs to is their partner. It's random, but you know you won't wind up with two excellent players paired or two weaker players together.

[RemyM]

The USGA handicap manual recommends that partners should not have more then an 8 shot difference in their handicaps, otherwise teams with a large difference will have a distinct advantage. Two man best ball is played at 90% handicap. If the partners do end up with more then 8 shots between them then that team would have their handicaps reduced another 10%. That is the way we play it at our club for our Member/Member and Member/Guest and it works out well. If you pair high and low and don't adjust handicaps then the middle guys paired together won't have a chance.