Golf - 8 player schedule

[Brokteam]

Hi,

I play golf evey Sunday with 7 other players. We normally play as 2 fourballs and just throw the balls up before hand to see who plays with who. I'd like to be a bit more organised and have a schedule so over a period of weeks each player gets to play with everybody and then just start the schedule again once we have ( I'm not sure how many weeks this would take). Any ideas about how best to do this?

I was thinking something like this

Players (1-8)
1234 5678
2345 6781
3456 7812
Etc

Many
Thanks

[Ian Wakeling]

Hi,

You need 7 Sundays, and then you can play the following schedule:

 {1 2 5 8} {3 4 6 7}
 {1 3 6 8} (2 4 5 7}
 {1 4 7 8} {2 3 5 6}
 (2 3 7 8} {1 4 5 6}
 {2 4 6 8} {1 3 5 7}
 {3 4 5 8} {1 2 6 7}
 {5 6 7 8) {1 2 3 4}

after which all pairs of players will have been in a fourball together three times,  and all triples of players will have been together in exactly one fourball.

[Brokteam]

Brilliant, thanks for your help.