By Michael Mattingly, Lead Golf Columnist | Sept 6, 2026
It’s midnight on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. The temperature is nearly 80 degrees this time of night. While the current conditions protest, the professional golf season has begun its slow march toward autumn, with attention turning to one of the most entertaining forms of the game: team golf.
The individual nature of professional golf gives way, at least for a little while, to something different.
Players who spend most of the year trying to beat one another suddenly find themselves wearing the same colors, cheering for the same shots and playing for something larger than themselves.
The Presidents Cup.
The Solheim Cup.
Team USA.
Team Europe.
National pride.
And a whole lot of golf.
I love it.
In my view, team golf is one of the things the professional game does exceptionally well.
For a few days, individual accomplishments become secondary. A birdie means a little more when it helps a teammate. A missed putt hurts a little more when you know someone else was depending on you.
The celebrations are bigger.
The disappointments are more visible.
And somehow, professional golf feels a little more human.
Maybe that’s because golf is normally such an individual game.
It’s you against the course.
You against the golf ball.
And, if you’re anything like me, occasionally you against your own brain.
But team golf changes the equation.
Suddenly, somebody else’s success becomes your success.
I’ve written before that golf is an individual game best experienced in the company of others.
The song remains the same.
I just happen to have my own team.
We call ourselves the Fab Four.
The name may suggest a level of golfing excellence that isn’t always present, but the friendship certainly is.
Our team has its own traditions.
There is usually music.
There is a golf cart.
There is plenty of conversation.
And there is a birdie shot.
After a birdie, if we’re so inclined, we enjoy a little shooter to celebrate.
I typically am inclined.
The great thing about traditions is that they don’t have to make sense to anyone else.
They’re ours.
That’s one of the things I love about playing golf with people you’ve known for a while. Eventually, the round develops its own language.
Certain jokes don’t need explaining.
Certain shots become part of the mythology.
And certain holes become memories that have very little to do with the number eventually written on the scorecard.
Take Atlantic Dunes by Davis Love III at the Sea Pines Resort.
The signature hole is the dramatic par-3 15th.
Two hundred and five yards.
It plays uphill and back toward the Atlantic Ocean, with an infinity green overlooking the beach. It plays into the ocean breeze, which is golf’s way of reminding you that you don’t get to make all the decisions.
Some days you can hear the waves crashing.
Some days, a fine mist of ocean spray is visible in the distance.
It’s one of those holes where you can stand on the tee box for a moment and forget you’re supposed to be worrying about your golf swing.
We birdied it. A long iron shot that fell short of the green followed by an outstanding chip shot that had to go and it did. Right to the bottom of the cup.
I remember the shot.
But I remember everything around the shot even more.
The ocean.
The sound of the waves.
The people beside me.
The high fives.
That’s team golf.
Another memory comes from Leatherstocking in Cooperstown.
There’s an elevated par 3 that concludes the front 9, the kind of hole that makes you stand on the tee and immediately start doing the math.
How far?
What’s the wind doing?
Where’s the trouble?
And, eventually, you have to swing it and trust it.
Playing as a two-some that day, I hit a nine iron that landed 15 feet from the pin. But my wife stepped up and hit a put that finished within an inch of the pin.
So close that members of the grounds crew watching nearby yelled:
“Give it to her!”
That’s a golf memory.
Not because the putt went in.
Because it almost did.
And because everybody watching cared enough to react.
That’s what happens when you’re playing as a team.
You start collecting each other’s moments.
Your partner’s near-birdie becomes your near-birdie.
Another partner’s great drive becomes something everybody celebrates.
An impossible chip that somehow stops beside the hole becomes part of the afternoon’s conversation.
And when somebody comes through with a shot that saves the team, everybody feels like they did it. It builds confidence.
And confidence has been known to accomplish remarkable things on a putting green.
And that’s the beauty of team golf.
For a few hours, your success becomes everyone else’s success.
You stop rooting only for yourself.
You start pulling for one another.
You want your friends to hit the shot.
You want them to make the putt.
You want to see the ball disappear into the hole.
Not because it helps your individual score.
Because it helps the team.
Of course, we’re still golfers.
So there is competition.
We encourage each other right up until somebody makes a birdie that gives them bragging rights for the rest of the afternoon.
We want our friends to play well.
And this is where I think professional golf could have a little more fun.
With all due respect to the tournaments, the courses and the history of these great events, perhaps the professional game could borrow a little from the way ordinary golfers experience team golf.
Not a lot.
Just a little.
Let the teams have some music.
Give them some room to celebrate.
Maybe even allow a birdie tradition.
Essentially, take some of the better ideas that have emerged from the LIV era without having to create another professional golf league.
Because for all it’s failures, LIV understood something that got lost in billion dollar public investment funds:
People don’t just want to watch golf.
They want to watch golfers.
They want to know who these people are.
They want to see personalities.
They want to see teammates laugh together.
They want to see the human beings underneath the sponsorship logos and perfectly pressed shirts.
Imagine, for a moment, if the Presidents Cup or Solheim Cup allowed each team to have a little bit of its own personality.
A playlist.
A team celebration.
Maybe even a designated birdie shot.
I’m not suggesting we turn the 17th green into a fraternity house.
I’m just suggesting we let the players have a little fun.
One could only imagine.
Scottie Scheffler drains a clutch birdie putt.
“Scottie, what are you having?”
“Apparently, 100 Bananas.”
Meanwhile, Nelly Korda and her teammates are celebrating a birdie with a little Dr. McGillicuddy’s.
The television cameras are rolling.
The crowd is laughing.
The players are laughing.
And nobody has forgotten that they’re playing for something important.
That’s the thing.
Fun doesn’t have to diminish competition.
It can actually make us care more about the people competing.
The professionals have their teams.
We have ours.
Their stakes are obviously much higher.
There are trophies.
There is national pride.
There are thousands of people watching.
For the Fab Four, there might be bragging rights.
And probably lunch.
But the feeling isn’t all that different.
Because the best part of team golf isn’t really the team.
It’s the people.
It’s the shared memories.
It’s the little traditions that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else.
It’s the music playing in the golf cart.
It’s the birdie shot after a great hole.
It’s the laughter after a terrible one.
It’s the person beside you telling you that your next shot is going to be better.
And sometimes it’s the person beside you standing in the trees because, apparently, your bad decisions have become contagious.
That’s what team golf gives us.
A reason to pull for someone else.
A reason to celebrate something that isn’t entirely ours.
A reason to spend four hours walking the fairways with people we enjoy.
I’ve written before that golf is an individual game best experienced in the company of others.
I think I understand that sentence a little better now.
The game may keep our individual score.
But the memories belong to all of us.
And maybe professional golf could take a lesson from the rest of us.
Give the players a little music.
Give them permission to celebrate.
Let them be teammates before they are brands.
Let them be people before they are professionals.
Because sometimes the best part of golf isn’t the shot you hit.
It’s the people sitting in the cart when you hit it.
And if you’re lucky enough to find a group of people with whom you can spend four hours laughing at bad shots, celebrating good ones, raising a glass after a birdie and occasionally searching for your ball in the woods, you’ve found something better than a good round of golf.
You’ve found a team.
And if you’re lucky, they’ll be waiting for you in the golf cart next Saturday.
Enjoy Your Sunday – MWM
