A two-ball party doesn’t really have too many considerations with regards to green fees.

Although we wouldn’t advise you to ‘push it’ too far, as we always prefer to encourage nailing things down early, but two players will find that they’re able to slot onto a tee-sheet later with much greater flexibility. They probably don’t come under the same level of pressure as larger parties do, but a two ball will still be expected to observe the same timelines as a fourball on the early opening and selling out courses like Royal County Down or Royal Portrush

Luckily, Scotland, Ireland, and North-West England are seriously rich for quality non-golf visitor attractions in close proximity to their top courses. You can bring non-golfers along safe in the knowledge that they won’t be missing out.

The only sub-regions where we come under pressure on extended stays are Ayrshire, and to a lesser extent Aberdeenshire. It’s possibly fair to say that south-west Ireland will eventually stretch a non-golfer too, as it requires more roadwork than the others

Otherwise we have some truly great non-golf compliments. Golf got lucky really! Many apex visitor attractions just happen to fallen well with her golf courses.

The standard accommodation solution is for a twin room (two beds, one room). The golf industry is well set-up for this. Indeed, the twin room in St Andrews is the more popular booking in some cases than the traditional double room is. A two-ball party generates one room under this scenario, the choice of a twin or a double is naturally dependent on the relationship in the party

In some cases you might consider foregoing the breakfast? A breakfast is charged to a room as two, regardless of whether or not both occupants eat one. There’s usually little to no difference in price if you pay cash on presentation in the morning. Since there’s no guarantee that both occupants will eat every morning, there’s a potential small saving, but honestly, it’s fractional and probably not worth the confusion

Seating capacity is rarely a problem with a golfing party, luggage however is. A golfer will normally generate one significant luggage item plus a golf bag. Two golfers therefore equals four luggage items.

Whereas three-ball parties probably still needed to use the bigger MPV to move six luggage items, a two-ball dips below this threshold and can use an estate car instead

The mathematics begins to equalise things for us. Sure we have fewer people to burden share the cost of the vehicle, but since we don’t require the larger more expensive vehicle any longer, we can achieve a per person price similar to that which a fourball party gets on an MPV

A good estate car has four seats and typically room for about 4/5 luggage items. If you’ve overloaded or begun to acquire souvenirs on your journey then there is always the slightly sub-optimal option of using the back-seat as an emergency measure. Sure it’s not ideal, but it would work.

Two-ball parties can play the Old Course through a conventional ballot application. No problem. You will be asked/ told to accept a fourth player into your booking though who has likely come through the singles ballot.

Some vendors might resist selling a guaranteed package to a three-ball party. It leaves an awkward fourth player to then re-sell. You might get around this by offering to compensate them to the full value of the fourth player in exchange for exclusivity, but it gets prohibitively expensive to do so

The smaller a group becomes, the more dilemmas the singles ballot potentially poses us, and no group perhaps encounters this more so than a two ball

The issue we face needn’t be two of us winning or losing, but rather how we try and hold the integrity of the party together in face of one win and one loss? What do we do now?

In truth, there is no right or wrong to answer to this. It depends purely on the character of the group.

The winning player might insist on playing the Old Course, (fair enough) but in doing so they’ll probably be committing to also playing solo on the rearranged course that was cancelled to allow them to do so.

This impacts the losing player though. Or put it another way, if the winning players becomes a single golfer, so too does the losing player by dint of being divorced from them.

If the winning player continues to recover rearranged rounds like this, then we’re set to extend our pattern of two singles playing apart.

The cleanest way of trying to solve this, is to switch the losing player on to another St Andrews track in-situ (we usually have somewhere like the New Course floating in an itinerary). This allows both golfers to stay in St Andrews on the same day, albeit they play different courses. The big advantage is that we can pick up the itinerary as a two ball again the following day (provided we’ve been able to rearrange the two ball that we cancelled to clear out space for the Old Course)

Another approach we often see a two ball adopt is a pact of ‘both play, or no play’, until that it is we reach the final two singles ballots, in which case we might as well adopt an ‘all in, and best of luck’

‘All in and best of luck’, is another legitimate approach of course, albeit the polar opposite of ‘both play or no play’. This requires us to accept the indiscriminatory nature of a random ballot, and accept that winners and losers happen, and that statistically, we stand a better chance of more people playing if we do go collectively selfish rather than imposing our own conditions on ourselves

OK, the unsuccessful golfer has to pretend to be pleased for their successful partner, and the successful partner has to pretend to be disappointed for their unsuccessful partner! but it’s more likely we can land one win from two attempts than it is two from two

Two ball parties might get thrown some particularly nasty dilemmas brought about by a split in any singles ballots outcomes, but they do benefit for being much more easily accommodated in a tee-sheet at short notice should they win an open ballot. It’s notably easier to salvage a two ball booking than it is a fourball party

This is particularly true of somewhere like Kingsbarns or Dumbarnie, and if we were going to be honest about it I suppose, Carnoustie as well, although that might be the difference between something being difficult (the two ball) and something being borderline impossible (a fourball). We have managed to recover two balls at Carnoustie before though

Muirfield only permits bookings from fourball parties. If you are two golfers who wish to play Muirfield you’ll be prevented from doing so, and will need to apply to a little known reserve list that might get called much nearer the time

Nearly all of the more popular courses reserve the right to allocate another two ball or single to your booking to make up a fourball