Tee time 5:40, sunset 7:25, nine holes if nobody looks for a ball for long. Four of you, after work, and somebody suggests the usual Nassau. Over nine holes the front nine is the whole round and the back nine doesn’t exist. A game built for eighteen needs rebuilding for nine, and the rebuild is easier than it sounds.
What changes over nine holes
Fewer holes means fewer chances. A bad hole is a bigger share of the round, skins carry for fewer holes before they run out, and a match has less time to come back. None of that is a reason not to play; it is a reason to choose a game with nine holes in mind.
Handicaps change too. The handicap system has a nine-hole course handicap of its own: half the Handicap Index rounded to the nearest tenth, times the nine’s slope over 113, plus the nine’s course rating minus its par. On a nine rated 35.8 with a slope of 124 and a par of 36, a 14.0 gets 7.0 × 124 ÷ 113, minus 0.2: 7.48, so 7 strokes. A 22.0 gets 12.
Pick a game that fits nine
Some groups split a nine-hole match into three-hole matches, or into the first four and last five plus the overall. Those are house versions. GoLo plays a Nassau over nine holes as one match, settled once, which is the same thing as a plain match. If your group wants the split version, keep it on paper.
Agree how the evening ends
A nine-hole game needs a finish line and a tie rule, agreed before the first tee shot. Ties come up more often when there are fewer holes to separate anyone.
A tied total
Best Score splits a tied place evenly in GoLo. If your group wants a playoff instead, agree where, and remember it’s a house rule GoLo won’t score.
A tied match
A match all square after nine holes is halved: nothing changes hands. Decide now if you would rather play an extra hole.
A skin carried into the 9th
In GoLo the card’s last hole ends the carries. If the 9th is tied with skins riding, the tied players split them.
Losing the light
Decide before you start whether an unfinished round counts at all. If you finish the round in GoLo on the 7th, it settles what seven holes decided: Best Score on the holes played, a match only if it was already won, and any skins still riding go to nobody.
One evening, worked through
Here is an invented after-work foursome: $1 net standard skins with carryovers on and all extra skin types off, and $5 Best Score, net, one finishing place. Everyone plays off their nine-hole course handicap.
| Hole | Skins |
|---|---|
| 1 | Mike wins one |
| 2 | Tied: carries |
| 3 | Dave wins two |
| 4 | Jess wins one |
| 5 | Mike wins one |
| 6 | Tied: carries |
| 7 | Tied: carries |
| 8 | Dave wins three |
| 9 | Mike wins one |
Dave’s five skins are worth $3 each, $15, and he pays $1 on each of the four skins the others won: $11 up. Mike’s three come to $3 up, Jess’s one to $5 down, and Tom, with none, is $9 down. Jess has the lowest net total, so Best Score puts her $15 up and everyone else $5 down.
| Player | Skins | Best Score | Net |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jess | −$5 | +$15 | +$10 |
| Dave | +$11 | −$5 | +$6 |
| Mike | +$3 | −$5 | −$2 |
| Tom | −$9 | −$5 | −$14 |
| Total | $0 | $0 | $0 |
Tom pays Jess $10 and Dave $4, and Mike pays Dave $2. Tom’s $14 is also the most anyone could lose at these amounts: nine skins at $1 and the $5 he put in. An after-work game whose worst evening is $14 is easy to say yes to.
Nine holes is long enough to win something and short enough that nobody minds losing it.
Setting up nine in GoLo
In GoLo, choose nine holes in setup. A nine-hole round plays holes 1 to 9 of the card, so it fits a front nine or a nine-hole course; it can’t score a course’s back nine yet. For strokes, GoLo halves the unrounded eighteen-hole calculation from the selected tee’s slope and rating, then rounds the result once. It places those strokes by the card’s stroke index. This is different from Rule 6.1b, which first rounds half the index to a tenth and uses the ratings for the nine being played.
On the front nine of an eighteen-hole course, the nine’s own ratings aren’t in GoLo’s course data. On a par-72 course rated 71.6 with a slope of 126 whose par-36 front nine is rated 35.5 with a slope of 122, a 22.0 gets 11 under the rule and 12 in GoLo. Even on a nine-hole course’s own tees, rounding half the index can change the result: a 14.1 on a par-36 nine rated 35.7 with a slope of 125 gets 8 under the rule and 7 in GoLo. Over nine holes a Nassau is one match, settled once, and Closest to Pin plays every par 3 on the card.
One scorer enters the gross scores, GoLo works out every game from the same card, and at the end it gives the group a short who-owes-whom list. The money changes hands outside the app, in the parking lot, before it gets dark.
Before the next after-work nine
Pick one game, two at most, and say the amounts, the scoring basis and the tie rules on the first tee. Skins carries have their own post, and the rest of the first-tee conversation is in the checklist. Then see one round from setup to settle-up or get GoLo for the next one.
