“Five a birdie” takes three seconds to agree on the first tee. What it means depends on who pays it, whether a handicap stroke can make one, and what happens when two players birdie the same hole. Most groups find out which version they were playing on the 8th green, from the player who has just made one.
Five dollars from whom?
The usual version is per player: every other player pays the maker the agreed amount. In a foursome a $5 birdie is worth $15 to the player who makes it. In a threesome it’s $10. Whatever the group size, somebody else’s birdie costs you $5.
The other version is a shared total. Everyone puts in a set amount before the round, say $10 each, and at the end the $40 is divided by the number of birdies made. Nobody can lose more than their $10, and nobody knows what a birdie is worth until the 18th is finished. GoLo doesn’t run this version; it’s a house arrangement, so agree its two awkward cases too: what happens if nobody makes a birdie, and how $40 splits across three birdies.
Here is the same invented foursome round under both. Four birdies were made: two by Mike, one each by Jess and Dave, and none by Tom. One hole, the 8th, had two of them.
| Player | Birdies | Per player at $5 | Shared total, $10 each |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mike | 2 | +$20 | +$10 |
| Jess | 1 | $0 | $0 |
| Dave | 1 | $0 | $0 |
| Tom | 0 | −$20 | −$10 |
| Total | 4 | $0 | $0 |
Per player, Mike collects $15 for each of his birdies and pays $5 for each of Jess’s and Dave’s: $30 less $10. Jess and Dave each collect $15 and pay $15. Tom pays $5 four times. With the shared total, four birdies make each one worth $10: Mike takes $20 of the $40, Jess and Dave $10 each, and Tom’s $10 ends up with Mike.
The two versions reward different rounds. Per player pays for volume: the more birdies, the more money moves, with no ceiling. A shared total pays for scarcity: if only one birdie is made all day, it is worth the whole $40.
Two birdies on one hole
On the 8th, Mike and Dave both made birdie. Per player, each of them is owed $5 by the other three, which includes each other. Those two payments cancel. Mike and Dave each finish the hole $10 up, not $15, and Jess and Tom each pay $10.
That surprises people because it isn’t how a hole usually works. Nobody won the 8th outright, and it doesn’t matter. A birdie bounty isn’t a contest for the hole: every birdie counts on its own, nothing carries, and two birdies are simply two birdies. That is how GoLo’s individual Skins counts them. In Team Play or a scramble, Skins is played team against team, and the arithmetic in this post doesn’t apply.
Gross birdies or net birdies
A gross birdie is one under par in actual strokes. A net birdie is one under par after the handicap strokes on that hole. A par on a hole where the player receives one stroke is a net birdie; with two strokes, that same par is a net eagle. With a wide spread of handicaps, net birdies give the high handicap a real chance of making one. They also mean more birdies, and so more money moving, than the group may have pictured when it agreed on five dollars.
Decide it before the first one falls, not after. GoLo’s Birdie Skin counts gross birdies only, from each player’s gross score, whether the round’s other games are net or gross. A net-birdie bounty is a house rule GoLo doesn’t track. The net-versus-gross example shows why the scoring basis needs settling first.
When the birdie also wins the hole
In GoLo, a birdie bounty is a setting of the Skins game: Birdie Skin, and Eagle Skin beside it. Both use the Skins game’s one skin amount, and every opponent pays each one. Turn the Standard Skin off and you have a birdie game on its own. Leave it on and a birdie can pay twice.
Take the round from the carryover post: $5 skins in a foursome, carryovers on, holes 1 to 3 halved, so the 4th is worth four standard skins. A birdie there that nobody matches takes all four, $60. Turn Birdie Skin on as well and the same birdie collects $5 more from each opponent.
Eagle Skin works the same way at two under par. With Birdie Skin on as well, an eagle collects both, which is the familiar “eagles pay double.” An ace on a par 3 is two under, so it collects the same two skins and nothing more: GoLo has no separate ace bonus, and no cap setting. If your group wants a limit on what one hot round can cost, agree it on the first tee and settle the difference yourselves.
One round, worked through
Here are the same four players on another invented day, in GoLo: Birdie Skin and Eagle Skin on at $5, Standard Skin off, so nothing else is in the Skins game. Gross birdies on the 2nd, the 6th (two) and the 17th, and Mike’s eagle on the par-5 11th.
| Hole | What happened | Mike | Jess | Tom | Dave |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Dave birdie | −$5 | −$5 | −$5 | +$15 |
| 6 | Jess and Tom birdie | −$10 | +$10 | +$10 | −$10 |
| 11 | Mike eagle: birdie and eagle skins | +$30 | −$10 | −$10 | −$10 |
| 17 | Jess birdie | −$5 | +$15 | −$5 | −$5 |
| Total | Six skins | +$10 | +$10 | −$10 | −$10 |
Six skins changed hands and the round nets to two settle-ups: Tom and Dave each pay $10, one to Mike and one to Jess. Every row adds to zero, and so does the total. GoLo works this out from the card and puts it in the same who-owes-whom list as every other game in the round. The money moves outside the app.
Five a birdie is a price. Who pays it is the agreement.
Settle the price in one sentence
“Five a birdie from each of us, gross, eagles pay double, no cap” is a complete agreement. So is “ten each in, split by birdies at the end.” Either one is clear on the first tee. “Five a birdie” on its own leaves the 8th green to decide the rest.
The rules and the usual variations are on the birdies guide, and the par-3 cousin of this argument, closest to the pin against a greenie, has its own post. When the sentence is agreed, see one round from setup to settle-up or get GoLo for the next one.
