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Golf Junk Bets: Greenies, Sandies and Barkies

Every golf junk bet explained — greenies, sandies, barkies, snakes, Arnies: the rule, the stake, how each one settles, and the argument it always causes.

MacGregor Thompson Updated

Junk — also called dots, garbage or trash — is the layer of small side bets that runs underneath the real match. A dollar for closest on a par 3. A dollar for getting up and down out of a bunker. A dollar back for three-putting.

They exist because a match can be over on the 14th tee and there are still four holes to play. Junk gives every single shot something on it, right up to the last putt of the day. And by the back nine they very often add up to more than the match did.

Here’s every one you’re likely to hear, what it actually takes to win it, and the argument each one causes.

The core six

Birdie

One under par. An eagle counts double in nearly every group — two dots, not one — and an albatross is three, if you ever have to settle that. This is the one dot nobody has to claim, because the scorecard already knows.

The argument: gross or net? A 20-handicap making net birdie on a stroke hole is not the same achievement as a 4 making a real one. Most groups run birdies gross and let the strokes live in the match. Say which before you tee off.

Greenie

Closest to the pin on a par 3, from the tee. The stake goes to whoever’s ball finishes nearest the hole — but almost every group adds a condition.

The argument: do you have to hold the green, and do you have to make par? The strictest version requires both: on the green from the tee, and a two-putt or better to keep it. The loosest pays the nearest ball wherever it ended. Both are fine. What isn’t fine is discovering the difference on the 16th after somebody’s chipped in from the fringe.

Sandie

Par or better on a hole where you were in a bunker. The classic up-and-down bet.

The argument: which bunkers count. Greenside only, or does the fairway bunker on 4 count too? Do waste areas count? And the spicy one — if you were in two bunkers on the same hole, is that one sandie or two? (It’s one. It’s one everywhere. Somebody will still try.)

Barkie (or woodie)

Par or better on a hole where you hit a tree. Golf’s tax on luck, refunded.

The argument: it has to be a tree, and it has to be audible. Leaves don’t count. A branch you clipped in the backswing doesn’t count. And the ball has to actually strike wood — “I was behind a tree” is not a barkie, it’s a lie with a witness.

Snake

A three-putt — and this one runs backwards. The snake is a bad dot: you don’t win it, you catch it, and you’re trying not to be holding it at the end.

The argument: two conventions, both common. In the hot-potato version the snake passes to whoever three-putts next, and whoever has it walking off 18 pays everybody. In the counting version every three-putt is a dot against you and the fewest collects. Pick one on the first tee — they produce wildly different 18th greens.

Long drive

Longest drive in the fairway, on one nominated hole (or one per nine). In the fairway is the whole point; the biggest hook of the day doesn’t win anything.

The argument: who measures, and what happens if nobody’s in the fairway. Answer both by nominating the hole in advance and agreeing that no fairway means no payout, carried or dead.

The rest of the vocabulary

How junk actually settles

There are two conventions, and this is where the real arguing happens.

Everybody pays the winner. A $1 greenie in a foursome costs the other three a dollar each, so that dot moved $3. Simple, brutal, and the reason a “dollar game” can be $40.

The difference gets paid. You count dots per player and settle the gap. If you finished with four dots and I finished with one, you collect three dollars from me, not four. Between two-man teams it’s the team totals that get compared.

The second one is how most regular groups actually talk — “you’re two greenies up on me” — and it’s what Swilkin does: each dot pot settles on the difference in counts, and a bad dot like the snake inverts so the fewest collects.

Either way, write down the dot value and say it out loud. A dollar a dot is the default for a reason. Five dollars a dot in a group that plays twenty dots a round is a real number. (How much should your group bet?)

Three house rules worth having

  1. Cap the junk relative to the match. If the dots routinely beat the Nassau, they’re not a side bet any more — they’re the game, and probably not the one you meant to play.
  2. Claim it on the hole, not at the bar. A dot claimed on the 18th green for something that happened on the 5th is a dot nobody can verify. Tap it, mark it, move on.
  3. Bragging rights is a legitimate setting. Plenty of groups play the whole junk layer for nothing but the count — the greenie still matters, the snake still stings, nobody owes anybody. That’s a real option in Swilkin too: dots with no price on them at all.

Where the app fits

The problem with junk was never the rules — it’s that twenty dots across four players over eighteen holes is bookkeeping nobody wants to do on a cart path. Swilkin has the six presets built in (birdie, greenie, sandie, barkie, snake, long drive), plus Bingo Bango Bongo and Trouble as bundles, and you can name your own. Birdies count themselves off your score with an eagle worth two; the rest are one tap on the hole they happened.

Then, on 18, every pot shows as its own line with each player’s count beside his name, and the dots get netted into the same settle-up as the match, the skins and the presses — one number, one receipt. (Every game it knows.)

Free for golfers, all of it.

Want the bigger games these sit under? Skins, the Nassau explained, or the best games by group size.