Twice a year I play a match with three guys from work. Usually, it's the guys who have handicaps of about 13 and 22, and hit their drives about 225 and 200, respectively, vs. the two guys who are a 10 and 28 (he rarely plays). They hit their drives in the 260 yd range.

In years past, we have all played from the whites. The matches have always been close. This year, there was a proposal that the shorter guys play from the yellows, and the longer guys play from the blues. One day, we will play better ball. The other day, we will play a step-aside scramble (can't use the same guy's shot two holes in a row) or other form of modified scramble with no strokes.

What do you think is the fairest format? All from the same tees, yellows and whites, yellows and blues, whites and blues? Should strokes come into play? Thanks for your input.

all from the same tees. based on your handicaps and distances, i should be same tees.

In my opinion based on your handicaps you guys should all play from the whites. Nothing to do with drive distance, just handicap.

I often play with a guy ten years younger than me, but basicly a beginner and at other times I play with a few over sixty guys, and in each case, everyone plays from the tee's they are most comfortable with, and we just apply the course HC at the end of the round to keep us playing on a level playing field.
Your group can play from different tees, just play with your HC's.

Play from whever you want, just adjust everyone's handicap based on their tee boxes. The process is as follows:

Calculate each player's course handicap from their index based on the slope of the tee box: ( Index * Slope / 113) = Course handicap

Then take the highest course rating tee box you're using, and figure out the difference from each of the other tee boxes in use. Subtract that amount from the player's course handicap, and round off. This is the player's adjusted course handicap.

So let's say you are a 14.0 index playing blues (72.0/130), opponent is 18.0 index playing whites (70.0/120)

Your course handicap would be: (14 * 130 / 113) = 16
Your opponent's course handicap: (18 * 120 / 113) = 19

However, since you're playing a higher rated tee box (72.0 - 70.0=2.0), your opponents handicap would go down by 2.0. So his course handicap would be 17 playing from the whites, yours 16 playing from the blues.

As far as the scramble, impossible to do strokes on an individual basis.

I play in a couple of organized golf groups with widely varying handicaps. We routinely allow shorter hitters to move up to simply because they don't like playing courses with (from their perspective) 10 par 5's.

And we use exactly the process defined by Larry above.

dave