What do Robert Rock, Eddie Pepperell, Sir Andy Murray, Charley Hull, Ronan Rafferty, Kipp Popert, Gareth Bale, and NCG’s Nicola Slater and I have in common?
They are all playing in this year’s Sunningdale Foursomes.
Pros, ams, women, men, old and young playing together, from the same tees, in mixed pairs with an equitable, uncomplicated handicap system.
The Sunningdale Foursomes was first played in 1934. Retaining its regular date in the second week of March ever since, past winners include Max Faulkner, Peter Alliss, Sir Michael Bonallack, Peter Oosterhuis, Sam Torrance, Ronan Rafferty and Chubby Chandler. Each year, the field routinely boasts tour professionals and former Ryder, Solheim, Walker and Curtis Cup players, both male and female.
What’s more, these players all play from the same tees and to the same par using a unique and simple handicap system where:
Male professionals play off +1
Male amateurs play off 0
Lady professionals play off 2
Lady amateurs play off 3
Foursomes is also quick. For the most part, the tournament gets through 36 holes a day, despite limited daylight hours. Even rounds going the full distance are scheduled to take under four hours.
I have played three times before. In 2015, I played with a retired LET pro, and we were knocked out in the third round by a pair of teenage, Swedish, female phenoms.
We lost in the field in 2016, largely due to a broken fly, and lost in a storm in 2019 with my teaching pro.
Foursomes rules. It digs into the very core of what makes golf great. Patience is a virtue as your partner leaves you up a tree, or you miss a crucial three-footer. A great foursomes player never apologises and thinks only of what he or she is leaving their partner with.
It rewards steadiness. A pair will lurch from the sublime to the ridiculous, grooving out par after par or never quite striking the same chord. There is an intimacy to foursomes that no other format comes close to.
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It can, of course, be funny, in that giggly, schoolboy way that the best golf is. Golf is ridiculous, and there is nothing more ridiculous than hitting one off your knees out of a gorse bush that your partner has planted you in.
As golf fumbles around in shorts, with dance music humming in the background, telling us not to blink, and trying to pretend it is something it isn’t like a drunk uncle at a wedding, I can’t help but think that the TikTok generation would prefer the speedy, silly, equitable, early spring days at Sunningdale than the contrived vibes we often see on tour nowadays.
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Have you ever been to the Sunningdale Foursomes, or even teed it up in your own club’s alternate shot event? Do we need more events like this in the amateur sphere? Tell us on Facebook!
