Page 03 · The foursome builder
The Foursome Builder
Paste the field, set the group size and receive groups that are level on average handicap. Reshuffle for a fresh draw, then fine-tune by hand with a pointer or from the keyboard alone.
The field
Enter the roster
One player per line works best: a name, then a handicap, such as Taylor Reed, 12. Commas, tabs, colons and dashes all work as separators. Plus handicaps take a minus sign or a leading plus.
Paste a list
Roster 0 players
The roster is empty. Add players one at a time, paste a list, or load the illustrative field of fourteen to see how the builder behaves.
The draw
The pairings board
Pick a player up with a click, a tap, or Enter. Then click another player to swap, press Place here on a group to move, or use the arrow keys to carry them between groups. Enter puts them down; Escape sets them back.
No groups yet. Add at least two players with valid handicaps, then choose Build the groups.
Groups built with the DC Lending Classic foursome builder. Handicaps as entered by the host.
The numbers
Balance check and tee sheet
Each bar shows a group’s average handicap against the field average. The shorter the spread between the highest and lowest average, the fairer the draw.
Average handicap by group
The balance report appears once groups are built.
Plain-text tee sheet
Notes and assumptions
How the balancing works
The method
The builder sorts the field from lowest handicap to highest and deals players across the groups in a serpentine order, so each group draws a mix of strong and gentle golfers. It then tries swapping players between groups for as long as a swap brings the group averages closer together. Comparing averages rather than totals is what keeps the result fair when some groups are a player short.
A small amount of randomness is added to the sort before dealing. That is why Reshuffle returns different groups of similar balance, and why two builds from the same roster rarely match.
Moving people by hand
Balance is arithmetic; pairings are judgment. Hosts know who should not play together and who should. Use the board to override the builder, then watch the balance check update with every move.
- Keyboard: Tab to a player and press Enter or Space to pick them up. The arrow keys carry them to the next or previous group. Enter drops, Escape cancels.
- Pointer or touch: click a player, then click another player to swap, or press Place here on a group.
- Full group: moving a player into a full group sends that group’s last player back to the group you came from.
Edge cases, handled
- Uneven numbers: ten players in groups of four become 4, 3 and 3. No group is ever more than one player smaller than another after a build.
- Missing or unreadable handicap: the player stays on the roster, marked, and is left out of the build. A message names who needs attention.
- Fewer than two players: there is nothing to balance, so the builder asks for more names instead of making one lonely group.
- Duplicate names: allowed. Two people can share a name; each entry is tracked separately.
- Large fields: up to 120 players can be held on the roster at once.
- Reshuffle after hand edits: a reshuffle rebuilds from the roster and replaces manual moves, so finish shuffling before you make your final adjustments.
Starting holes
In shotgun mode each group is assigned a starting hole in order, from hole 1. If there are more groups than eighteen holes, the extras are labelled B, such as 1B, to start behind the first group on that hole. In tee-time mode groups are numbered in order and the times come from the run-of-show planner.
Where your roster lives
The roster is kept in this browser while you work, and goes nowhere else. Copy the tee sheet before you clear site data.