How Fourball scoring works

Fourball is simple to play and surprisingly deep once you look under the hood. You pick four golfers, you stay under a salary cap, and every week you collect points based on how your players actually perform on the course. No luck-of-the-draw waivers, no mystery multipliers. Just real golf turned into a clean, honest score.

This guide walks through every way points are earned, why the top of the leaderboard matters so much, and how to think about building a team that scores well week after week. By the end you will be able to read any performance and estimate the fantasy haul in your head.

The weekly score in one line

Here is the whole game in a single sentence: your weekly score is the sum of your four golfers’ points. That is it.

Each golfer earns points independently based on where they finish, whether they make the cut, how they play hole by hole, and how many greens they hit. Add up all four totals and you have your team score for the week. There is no captain, no bench, no partial credit for “almost.” Four players, four point totals, one sum.

Because it is a straight sum, every golfer on your roster counts equally. A quiet week from one player can be carried by a big week from another, which is exactly why balance matters when you build your four. We will get to roster construction later, but keep this mental model front and center: four scores in, one number out.

Finish position: where most points live

The single biggest source of points is where your golfer finishes the tournament. Fourball rewards the top of the leaderboard steeply, then tapers as you move down the field. Here is the full table:

From 10th down to 30th the points slide gently toward 3. Positions 31st through 50th are worth 2 points, 51st through 70th are worth 1, and 71st or worse earns nothing from finish position.

Notice how front-loaded this is. A win is worth 100, but second place drops to 75, and third to 65. The gap between 1st and 5th (100 to 52) is larger than the gap between 5th and 50th (52 to 2). That design is deliberate. Contending golfers, the ones with a genuine chance to win on Sunday, are worth far more than steady mid-pack finishers.

This is why the top of the leaderboard dominates your weekly total. One golfer in the mix for a title can outscore your other three combined. When you pick, you are really asking a simple question: which of my four has a realistic path to the top ten?

The made-cut bonus and the missed-cut penalty

Most professional tournaments cut the field roughly in half after two rounds. Fourball rewards survival and punishes an early exit.

Make the cut and your golfer earns a +10 bonus. Miss the cut and your golfer takes a -5 penalty. That is a 15-point swing on a single line, before any finish-position points are even counted.

The made-cut bonus is the floor of a good pick. Even a golfer who limps to a weekend finish outside the top 50 still banks the +10, plus a point or two for position. The missed-cut penalty is the trapdoor. A player who misses not only fails to earn finish points, they actively cost you five. Two or three missed cuts across your four golfers can sink an otherwise promising week.

When you evaluate a pick, weigh their cut-making reliability alongside their ceiling. A boom-or-bust golfer who misses half their cuts carries real downside that a steady week-in, week-out professional does not.

Birdies, eagles, and the cost of bogeys

Finish position and the cut bonus are settled after 72 holes, but Fourball also scores the round itself, hole by hole. This is where a golfer’s shot-making shows up directly.

• Eagle: +3
• Birdie: +1
• Bogey: -1
• Double bogey or worse: -2

Pars are neutral, worth zero, which fits how golfers think about them anyway. An eagle is a genuine event, so it is worth three times a birdie. A bogey costs you a point, and a double or worse costs two, no matter how ugly the number climbs.

When live hole-by-hole data is not available, Fourball falls back to strokes under par for that round, so an aggressive, low-scoring golfer is still rewarded. Either way, the message is the same: birdie-makers score well here. A player who peppers the flag and racks up red numbers builds points on top of whatever their finish delivers, while a scrambler who saves par all day earns the neutral zero.

This layer rewards the exact kind of golf that also produces good finishes, so it tends to amplify your best picks rather than fight them.

Greens in regulation: the quiet points

Here is the category most new players overlook. Every green in regulation is worth +0.25, rounded. Hit a green in the expected number of strokes and you bank a quarter of a point.

It sounds tiny, and per green it is. But greens in regulation add up fast across four rounds. A ball-striker who hits 14 greens a day is stacking these quarter-points hole after hole, and over 72 holes that can quietly total into double digits. In the worked example below, greens in regulation contribute 12 points on their own, which is more than a solo third-place finish is worth in some scoring layers.

The reason this matters for picks: greens in regulation reward the steady ball-strikers, the players who find fairways and hit greens even when the putts are not dropping. Those golfers give you a dependable stream of quiet points that does not depend on a hot putter. It is the least glamorous stat in the game and one of the most reliable.

Why majors score double

Four times a year the stakes change. At the Masters, the PGA Championship, the U.S. Open, and The Open, every single point doubles. Finish position, cut bonus, birdies, eagles, greens, all of it, multiplied by two.

That is the whole scoring sheet running at 200 percent. A win worth 100 becomes 200. A made cut worth 10 becomes 20. Even the quarter-point greens double to a half-point each. Nothing is exempt except a disqualification, which scores a flat 0 regardless of what happened before the DQ.

Because majors double everything, they swing entire seasons. A great week at a regular event is nice. A great week at a major can be worth two great weeks. We break down the strategy of major weeks in a companion post on the majors, but the headline is simple: majors are where leagues are won and lost, so bring your best four.

A fully worked example

Let us score a single golfer’s dream week at a major to see all the layers stack up.

Start with the raw performance:

• Finished 1st: 100
• Made the cut: +10
• Birdies and eagles across the week: +24
• Greens in regulation: +12

Add those together: 100 + 10 + 24 + 12 = 146 points at a regular event.

Now apply the major multiplier. Because this happened at a major, every point doubles:

146 × 2 = 292 points.

That is one golfer, one week. Remember, your weekly team score is the sum of all four golfers, so a 292 from one player is an enormous head start toward a league-topping week. This is exactly why the double-point majors reward putting your strongest, most in-form golfers in the lineup when it counts.

How to build your four under the $40M cap

You pick four golfers and your combined salary must stay under $40M. That cap is the whole strategic puzzle. You cannot simply roster the four biggest names, so every pick is a trade-off between a star’s ceiling and a value player’s price.

A few principles that hold up well:

• Balance stars and value. Anchor with one or two elite names who can win outright, like Scottie Scheffler or Rory McIlroy, then fill the rest with mid-priced golfers whose form justifies the spot.
• Floor versus ceiling. A high-floor golfer reliably makes cuts and hits greens, banking the +10 and the quiet quarter-points. A high-ceiling golfer can win but might miss and cost you -5. A good four usually blends both so a couple of quiet weeks do not sink you.
• Respect the cut. Because a missed cut is a 15-point swing against a made cut, cut reliability is worth paying a little more for, especially at majors where that swing doubles.
• Course fit. Some venues favor bombers, others reward precision ball-strikers who pile up greens in regulation. Match your picks to the test.

Browse the full players list to compare prices against recent form, and check the tournament archive to see which venues suit which styles.

Why nothing reshuffles

One of the best things about Fourball is that the game is honest from lock to finish. Picks lock when the first group tees off, and until that moment every team stays hidden. No one can copy your lineup, and you cannot react to theirs.

Once play begins, nothing reshuffles. There are no substitutions, no late swaps, no retroactive changes. Your four are your four. Scoring runs live and exact as the golf happens, so your total updates in real time and the number you finish with is exactly what your players earned. What you picked is what you get, which is the whole point.

That clean design puts the emphasis where it belongs: on reading form, respecting the cap, and trusting your four. Start by scouting the players, then line up your targets against the season’s tournaments and build the best four you can.