What's your ideal number of playing partners?

Threeball

Pros: Brilliant, someone else to dilute things a little. There’s more chance of a wider range of conversation other than the Premier League and their Fantasy Football team, more people to look for my ball, more chance to not have to always put the flag back in and more chance not to have to do the scoring.

Things can get a bit more casual in a three. You can agree on playing ‘ready golf’, the thought of which seems to liberate everyone in the party before, six holes in, you revert to type and just hit off in the order of previous successes.

And, should you get a wrong ‘un in the group, someone else to talk in hushed tones about behind their back when they take another iffy drop.

Cons: What on earth are we going to play now other than a Stableford where we know the winner after 12 holes? Split Sixes is pretty good but is fairly exhausting given that you seem to be the only one who can keep a track of the scoring. Clue: round the totals down and make sure they are divisible by three.

I don’t like threes given, in my head, I’m either the odd one out in the conversation or am fretting over someone else. Things rarely flow in a three, someone has taken over the chat and the rest of us are just there to listen.

Fourball

Pros: At last, a proper match. Fourball betterball, a format that I could easily play every time I peg it up.

Sorry about that last phrase, terrible.

Anyway this is all good. We can talk in pairs and swap from one player to another, it’s basically like four hours of speed dating as you settle on your favourite and try to spend as much time with him/her.

Somebody will have had the good grace to pop their ball in their pocket before we start on the putting so that just leaves his partner to steam his putt 10 foot past before offering ‘I had to give it a go’.

Cons: There’s always one in the four who refuses to look for any ball, instead doing their own thing and, most likely, staring into their phone when they should be on their hands and knees with the rest of us in some heavy bund.

This is terrible, there are too many of us. Just when we think it’s safe to leave the teeing ground and carry on with the round you then realise that there are still another two more to hit.

And then two of us are hitting provisionals and it seems like four lives will likely end on this small strip of mown turf.

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