settlingbetting

Who Owes Who: Settling Five Bets Between Four Golfers

A worked example of settling a golf round — a team Nassau, a press, skins, dots and a side match between four players, from 57 obligations to three payments.

MacGregor Thompson · August 31, 2026

The bets are the fun part. The arithmetic on the 18th green is not, and it is where the afternoon actually goes wrong — not because anybody is dishonest, but because four people are each holding a different subset of the same numbers and one of them is doing it out loud.

So here is the whole thing worked through. One real Saturday, four golfers, five bets, every number shown. If you only take one idea away, take the last section: you settle the round, not the bets.

The game

Ray, Priya, Danny and Tom. One cart each pair, one scorecard, and this on the first tee:

1. A $10 Nassau, two-man better-ball — Ray & Priya against Danny & Tom. Front, back and total are three separate bets. (What a Nassau is.)
2. The press. Ray & Priya went two down on the 13th and pressed, which opens a new $10 bet on the remaining holes. (When to press, and when you have to take it.)
3. Skins, $5 a skin, net, carryovers — all four. A skin is $5 from each of the other three, so winning one is worth $15. (Skins rules.)
4. Dots, $1 — greenies, sandies, barkies, snakes. Same convention: a dot is $1 from each of the other three. (Every junk bet explained.)
5. A $20 side match, Ray against Danny, because the two low guys always have their own thing going.

What happened

Ray & Priya won the front. Danny & Tom won the back and, on the strength of it, the total. The press Ray & Priya opened on 13 went against them too. Priya had the round of her life on the greens and took three skins; Ray took two; Tom one; Danny none, which he mentioned. Danny led the dots with four, Tom three, Ray two, Priya one. Ray closed out Danny 2&1 in the side match.

The five bets, one at a time

The Nassau. Three segments at $10, team against team. Ray & Priya win one, lose two: −$10 to their team, which is $5 a man each way.

The press. One more $10 bet, lost: another −$10 to Ray & Priya’s team, another $5 a man.

So Nassau and press together: Ray −$10, Priya −$10, Danny +$10, Tom +$10.

The skins. Six skins were won. Each is worth $15 to the winner and costs the other three $5 apiece:

The dots. Ten dots, $3 to the winner of each, $1 from everyone else:

The side match. Ray beat Danny 2&1: Danny −$20, Ray +$20.

Adding it up

It sums to zero, which is the only check that matters: 18 + 14 + 2 − 34 = 0. If a golf settlement does not sum to zero, a number is wrong somewhere — money does not appear or vanish in a zero-sum game, and that single test catches almost every arithmetic error before anybody gets out a phone calculator.

The bit everyone gets wrong

Count the individual obligations if you settle each bet on its own terms:

• six skins × three payers = 18
• ten dots × three payers = 30
• four team results (front, back, total, press) × two losers = 8
• one side match = 1

Fifty-seven separate obligations between four people. Nobody settles fifty-seven anything in a car park. What you do instead — and it is the right thing to do — is net them:

Danny pays Ray $18, Priya $14, and Tom $2. Three payments. Nobody else owes anybody.

One person happened to lose to everybody here, which makes it especially tidy. The general rule is the same: work out each player’s single net figure, then match the people who are up against the people who are down. Four golfers never need more than three transfers.

Settle the round, not the bets. The moment you start paying out bet by bet — a fiver here for the front nine, three dollars there for a greenie — you have turned one transaction into dozens and you will still get it wrong, because somebody will pay the same skin twice.

The three arguments this actually prevents

“I thought the press was only on the back nine.” It is — but say what a press covers when you call it, and write it down. The press etiquette post has the conventions; the point here is that the disagreement is always about scope, never about maths.

“Was that skin net or gross?” Decide before the first tee, because on a mixed-handicap card net skins and gross skins produce completely different winners. Half of the skins arguments in golf are this one question asked too late.

“Did I get a shot on 4?” Net games run on course handicap and the format’s allowance, and the stroke index decides which holes. That is public arithmetic and it should be visible on the card before you tee off, not reconstructed on 18. See golf handicaps, explained and the allowance chart.

What Swilkin does with this

All five of those bets live on one scorecard, scored as you play, each settled on its own terms — and the settle-up page nets them down to the payments that actually have to happen, with a receipt that itemises where every dollar came from. It shows the zero-sum check on its face: it balances and the figure that changes hands. Venmo, PayPal or Cash App opens prefilled with the right amount and the right person.

Swilkin never holds or moves a cent. It does the arithmetic; your pay app moves the dollars, the way it always has. Money is deemed settled once it’s shown — there is no debt ledger chasing your friends for $7, and money is hidden entirely until a group actually plays for some.

If you want the buyer’s version of this rather than the worked example, it’s in what to look for in a golf betting app.

Also worth reading: how much should your group bet? · many bets, one card · can it settle the money at the end?