How to Play Skins Golf Game

Skins is one of the most exciting and widely recognized wagers in social golf. Unlike stroke play, which penalizes a player heavily for a single bad hole, Skins rewards outright excellence. The goal is simple: win as many individual holes outright as possible. It is highly dynamic because tied holes carry over, rapidly increasing the value of subsequent holes.

Core Rules: Outright Wins Only

In a Skins game, each of the 18 holes is assigned a "skin" (a pre-agreed dollar value or point amount, such as $1 per skin). To win a skin, a golfer must **win the hole outright** by having the single lowest score in the group on that hole.

If two or more players tie for the lowest score on a hole, the skin is not won. Instead, the hole is tied (or "halved"), and the skin **carries over** to the next hole.

The Carryover Mechanic

Carryovers are what make Skins uniquely thrilling. When a hole is tied, the skin value accumulates. For example, if Holes 1, 2, and 3 are tied, there are 4 skins on the line on Hole 4 (Holes 1, 2, 3 carryovers plus Hole 4's base skin). If a player wins Hole 4 outright with a birdie, they claim all 4 skins at once. If Hole 4 is also tied, all 4 skins roll over to Hole 5, and so on.

In some formats, if Hole 18 is tied, the round ends in a tie for those skins, or players agree to a sudden-death playoff (if the course allows). Settle the Card tracks accumulated wagers hole-by-hole, showing precisely how much is at stake on the current box.

Gross Skins vs. Net Skins

Depending on the players' handicaps, Skins is played in one of two formats:

• Gross Skins: The raw scores are compared. This format is popular among golfers with similar playing abilities.
• Net Skins (Handicapped): Course handicaps are applied, giving high-handicap golfers a fair chance. Strokes are subtracted from gross scores on the designated handicap holes (indicated by the handicap rating of each hole). If a player with a stroke gets a gross 5 on a par-4 hole, their net score is a 4. If that net 4 is lower than everyone else's net scores, they win the skin outright.

Skins and Group Sizes

Skins is highly flexible and can be played with groups of three, four, or even larger fields. In Settle the Card, you can add up to 5 players on a single local card (a standard fivesome), or use **Fairway Sync** (Pro feature) to host shared multi-group cloud rounds, keeping track of skins across a larger tournament field.

Settle the Card Ledger

At the end of the round, Settle the Card calculates the total skins won by each player. The ledger automatically handles the math, subtracting the cost of participation (each player buys in for the total skins available, or pays on a net-loss basis) to show exactly who owes whom.