Four of you on the first tee, a minute before the group behind pulls up, and somebody asks: skins or a Nassau? They pay for different things. Skins pays whoever wins a hole outright. A Nassau pays whoever wins more holes than their opponent, three times over. Pick the one that doesn’t suit the group and somebody has stopped playing for anything by the 6th.
One pays for holes, the other for matches
In skins, every hole is worth one skin. The lowest score on the hole wins it, but only if nobody else matches it. If two or more players tie for low, nobody wins the hole, and with carryovers on, the skin rides to the next one. Everyone plays everyone on every hole, and nothing that happened earlier changes what a hole is worth, apart from a carry.
A Nassau is three matches: the front nine, the back nine and the overall eighteen. Each hole is won, lost or halved against an opponent, and whoever has won more holes when a nine ends wins that match. A Nassau keeps a running score of a contest. Skins keeps a list of separate prizes.
Same hole, two different results
Take one invented hole in a net foursome game. After strokes: Mike 4, Jess 4, Tom 5, Dave 6. Nobody won it outright, so skins pays nothing. If carryovers are on, the next hole is now worth two skins.
In a Nassau, the same hole keeps everyone busy. Without teams, GoLo plays a foursome’s Nassau head to head: each player has a Nassau against each of the other three, six pairings in all. On this hole, five of the six pairings moved.
| Pairing | Net scores | Result on the hole |
|---|---|---|
| Mike v Jess | 4 – 4 | Halved |
| Mike v Tom | 4 – 5 | Mike wins |
| Mike v Dave | 4 – 6 | Mike wins |
| Jess v Tom | 4 – 5 | Jess wins |
| Jess v Dave | 4 – 6 | Jess wins |
| Tom v Dave | 5 – 6 | Tom wins |
That is the whole difference in one hole. In skins, the only score that counts is the lowest one, and only when it stands alone. In a Nassau, Tom’s 5 counted: it beat Dave. A player who will rarely post the low number in a foursome still has a match to win.
Which game suits which group
Neither game is fairer in general. Each rewards a different kind of round, so start with the round your group usually plays.
Play either one net if the handicaps are far apart. In gross skins, the best player in a foursome tends to take a large share of the holes anyone wins outright, and a gross Nassau makes the 24-handicap’s matches against the 6 a long walk. GoLo gives each player their full course handicap and places the strokes by the card’s stroke index, in both games. A Nassau is also kind to a newer player: the back nine starts level on 10, so a rough front nine isn’t the end of the day.
In GoLo’s Team Play, four players form two fixed pairs and each team’s better score on a hole is the one that counts. That gives a foursome the familiar two-against-two Nassau. Skins, Best Score and the Overall Match can run team against team the same way; Wolf isn’t played in Team Play.
Same ceiling, different route to it
Here are two example amounts for a GoLo foursome without teams. In $1 standard skins, with the Birdie, Eagle, Greenie and Sandie skins left off, every opponent pays the winner $1 for each skin, so a single skin is worth $3 to the player who takes it. Carries stack: win the hole after two ties and the three skins are worth $9. The most any one player can lose is $18, which needs the other three to win all eighteen skins between them. Each extra skin type adds to that, and GoLo puts no cap on Birdie and Eagle skins.
In a $2 Nassau played head to head with no presses, each player has three opponents and three matches against each of them. Lose all nine and that is $18. Presses would add to it; in GoLo, presses are on the Overall Match game, not the Nassau.
Skins asks who was best on the hole. A Nassau asks who was better than you.
Or play both from one card
Nothing stops a group running both: the Nassau gives the round a structure and the skins give the quiet holes something to play for. Add the ceilings first. At the amounts above, with standard skins only, playing both means a player could lose $36, not $18.
Here is an invented final tally for the same foursome after a $2 head-to-head Nassau and $1 standard skins with carries on, all eighteen skins won. The plus signs are players who are up.
| Player | Nassau | Skins | Net |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mike | +$10 | +$2 | +$12 |
| Jess | +$4 | −$2 | +$2 |
| Tom | −$6 | +$6 | $0 |
| Dave | −$8 | −$6 | −$14 |
| Total | $0 | $0 | $0 |
Tom came out $6 down in the Nassau and won six skins, and finishes square. Mike came out furthest ahead. Dave pays Mike $12 and Jess $2; nobody pays Tom and Tom pays nobody. Each column adds to zero, which is the first thing to check on any hand-kept tally.
GoLo works both games out from the same scores, nets them into one number per player and gives the group a short who-owes-whom list. The money changes hands outside the app, however your group already does it. See one round from setup to settle-up.
If you still can’t decide
Play skins this week and a Nassau next week, with the same four players and the same small amounts. The group will tell you which one it preferred by how much talking there was on the 16th tee. The rules for each are on the skins guide and the Nassau guide; how a carry gets out of hand is in the carryover post, and the house rules a Nassau needs are in the $2 Nassau post.
If the real argument is about match play against a total score, that is a different question, and it has its own post. When you’ve chosen, get GoLo for the next round and let one card keep both games.
