How to Keep Score for Skins, a Nassau and Match Play (and Keep Everyone Honest)
To keep score for golf side games, score every hole for every player, then apply each game's rule to those hole scores: skins go to the outright low score on a hole with ties carrying to the next, a Nassau is three separate bets on the front nine, the back nine and all 18, and match play counts holes won rather than strokes. Net every game into one number per pair of players at the end, and keep any score changed after it was entered on the record. The games are simple. The bookkeeping is where friendships get tested.
This guide covers how each game is scored, how to settle up across several games at once, the mistakes that cause arguments in the car park, and how Bogey, GolfTracker's AI caddie, does all of it from the scorecards. The full rules of each game live in our guides to skins, the Nassau and match play.
Start with one scorecard everybody trusts
Every side game is arithmetic on the same thing: each player's score on each hole. Get that right and the games follow. Get it wrong and no amount of careful adding saves you.
- One score per player per hole, entered as you go. Reconstructing four scores on the 18th green from memory is how a 6 becomes a 5.
- A picked-up hole has no score. It is not a tie and it is not a par. Record nothing, and let each game treat it the way its rules say.
- Agree the stakes before the first tee. A $5 Nassau is three $5 bets, and skins are usually a stake per skin per player. Say it out loud once.
How to score skins
Each hole is worth one skin. The player with the outright lowest score on the hole wins it. If two or more players tie for low, nobody wins it and the skin carries over to the next hole, which is then worth two. Carryovers keep stacking until someone wins a hole outright and takes everything that has piled up.
Scoring skins hole by hole
- Everyone must have a score on the hole. If a player picked up, there is no contest on that hole and the skin carries, exactly as if it had been tied.
- Ties carry, they never split. Two players both making 4 means the skin rolls on. Splitting it is a different game.
- Track what is riding on the next hole. "Three skins carrying" is the number the group wants to hear on the tee.
Paying skins
In a skins pot everyone puts the stake in on every hole, so when a player wins a hole worth three skins, each other player owes them three stakes. If the last hole of the round is tied, the skins still carrying are simply not won, and nobody owes anything on them.
How to score a Nassau
A Nassau is three bets in one: the front nine, the back nine and the overall 18. Each is scored on total strokes, head to head, and each is worth the stake, which is why a "$5 Nassau" can cost $15.
Scoring the three bets
- Front nine: total strokes on holes 1 to 9. Lower total wins the bet.
- Back nine: total strokes on holes 10 to 18.
- Overall: total strokes on all 18.
- A tied bet is a push. Nobody pays on it.
- Only count holes both players finished. A hole one player picked up on shouldn't hand the other a stroke advantage in the total.
On a nine-hole round there is no back nine, so a Nassau plays as a single bet. Charging for the "front nine" and again for an identical "overall" would double the stake on the same holes.
Many groups add presses, a new side bet started when someone falls two down. Presses are a house rule. Agree them up front and write them down, because they multiply quickly.
How to score match play
Match play is scored by holes won, not total strokes. Win a hole and you go one up; lose one and you go one down; tie and the hole is halved. A blow-up costs you one hole, not the round.
Reading a match
- "Two up through 11" means one player has won two more holes than the other so far.
- Dormie means a player is as many holes up as there are holes left. They can no longer lose, only win or halve.
- Closed out: when a player is more holes up than there are holes left, the match is over. "Won 4 and 3" means four up with three to play.
- Halved: level after 18. Nobody wins the stake.
Settling up across several games
Most groups play more than one game, and the payments point in every direction: you won the front nine off Sam, Sam won three skins off you, and Alex took the match from both of you. Paying each debt separately is correct and miserable.
Net it. For each pair of players, add up everything one owes the other across every game, subtract what flows the other way, and settle the single difference. Four players with a Nassau and skins end with, at most, one number per pair instead of a dozen small debts crossing back and forth.
Where side-game scorekeeping goes wrong
- Splitting tied skins instead of carrying them.
- Counting a Nassau as one bet, then arguing about why someone owes $15.
- Treating a picked-up hole as a half in match play, or as a par in the Nassau total.
- Totals that disagree with the card. Somebody adds the front nine in their head and the number on the card says something else.
- Scores changed after the fact. Honest corrections happen, and so does the quiet 6-to-5 on the 16th tee. Without a record, nobody can tell the difference.
How Bogey keeps score, and keeps everyone honest
Bogey is GolfTracker's AI caddie. It exists for exactly this bookkeeping.
- Ask it anything about the round. Who's winning, who's up in the Nassau, who has the most skins, who owes what. Bogey answers from the scorecards.
- The numbers come from the scoring engine, never from a guess. GolfTracker's scoring engine computes the skins with carryovers, all three Nassau bets and the match status, and nets every game into one number per pair. Bogey puts those finished numbers into words. If the cards don't answer a question yet, it says so.
- Every changed score stays on the record. A score changed after it was entered is logged with who changed it, the hole, the old score, the new score and the time, and the whole group can see it or ask Bogey about it.
- The turn and the final. Bogey reports the standings when the group makes the turn and when every card is in. If a score changes after the final, it re-announces the corrected result, with exactly what changed.
- No money moves. GolfTracker never holds or transfers betting money. Bogey tells you who owes whom, and you settle up the way you always have.
Side games are scored on gross scores today. Bogey scores the three Nassau bets but doesn't track presses; if your group plays them, settle the presses by hand.
Where to find it
On a golf trip, Bogey is already live in the trip chat on golftracker.ai: ask who's winning the trip or how the cup stands. In a round with friends, side games, Ask Bogey and the turn and final reports arrive in the GolfTracker app with the next update. Your round page on golftracker.ai already shows Bogey and the change record for rounds played with a group.
Meet Bogey, or plan a golf trip and it's on the leaderboard from the first tee.