Home › Golf games › Skins

Skins in golf: rules, carryovers and how to score it

In a skins game the lowest score on a hole wins that hole, and the hole is worth one skin. If two or more players tie for lowest, nobody wins it and the skin carries over to the next hole, which is then worth two. The carry keeps building until somebody wins a hole outright and takes the lot.

That is the whole game in three sentences, which is why it travels so well. What people actually argue about is everything around it: whether ties carry or die, whether handicap strokes count, what happens on the last hole if it ties, and how you work out where everyone finished. This page covers all of it.

How a hole is won

Compare every player's score on the hole. The single lowest score wins the skin. Not the lowest two, not a share, the lowest one. If two players both make four and everyone else makes five, the four does not win, because it was not the only lowest score.

That is the part people get wrong most often. A skin needs an outright winner. A tie at the top means nobody won the hole, however many strokes clear of the rest of the field those two players were.

Ties, carries and the pot that keeps growing

When a hole ties there are two ways to play it, and you should agree which before you tee off.

Carryovers are the more popular choice because of what they do to the back nine. Three tied holes in a row turn an ordinary par four into a hole worth four skins, and a group that has been plodding along suddenly cares a great deal about a six foot putt.

What happens if the last hole ties

Those skins have nowhere to go. Agree the answer in advance, because it will come up. The three usual settlements are: the carry is simply lost, which is the simplest and the most common; the group plays extra holes until someone wins outright; or the carry is split between whoever tied for the lead on that last hole.

Playing skins with handicaps

Skins works perfectly well as a scratch game between players of similar ability. Put a 6 handicap and a 22 handicap in the same game without strokes and the 22 will win almost nothing, and will stop caring somewhere around the fifth hole.

The fix is to play off net scores. Each player gets their handicap strokes on the holes where the course's stroke index says they fall, and the hole is decided on net rather than gross. A player receiving a stroke on hole 7 who makes five has a net four there, and that four beats an opponent's gross four outright.

This produces the single best thing about handicap skins, which is that a stroke landing on the right hole can win a skin for a player who would never win one otherwise. It also produces more ties, and therefore more carries, because net scores bunch up more than gross ones do.

Most groups play one of two ways. Full handicap gives everyone their whole allowance. Low handicap plays off scratch, where the best player in the group drops to zero and everyone else receives the difference between their index and that player's, which keeps the strokes in the group proportional without handing out a stroke a hole.

Rolling a hole

A roll is a group's agreement that one hole counts for more than the others, usually double. It is not part of traditional skins and it is not something you have to use, but it is common enough in regular groups to be worth knowing.

You might roll the last hole to make sure the round ends on something, roll a par three that everyone hates, or roll a hole on the spot when the match has gone flat. A hole rolled at double that is worth three skins from carries pays out six.

Working out where everyone finished

This is the part that gets done badly on the back of a scorecard in a car park, and it is worth doing properly, because the obvious method is wrong.

The wrong method is to count each player's skins and call the highest total the winner. That tells you who won the most holes, but not how far ahead or behind anyone finished, because every skin you win is also a skin the other players did not.

The right method measures each player against the field. Take the number of skins a player won, multiply it by the number of players, subtract the total number of skins won by everyone, and multiply by whatever a skin is worth in points.

Four players, eleven skins won across the round, two points a skin.

The column adds to zero, which is the check that it has been done right. Ryan won three skins and finished barely ahead, because with eleven skins across four players the average was nearly three. Winning a few holes is not the same as winning the round.

Questions that come up

Can two players share a skin?

No. A skin needs an outright winner. Two players tying for low on a hole means nobody wins it, and under carryover rules the skin moves to the next hole.

How many players do you need?

Two works, though it is a thin game, because a tie between two players happens often and carries build quickly. Three or four is where skins is at its best. Above six the chance of an outright low score on any hole drops and most holes tie.

Do carries reset after someone wins?

Yes. A win clears everything that has built up, and the next hole starts again at one skin.

Can you play skins and another game at the same time?

Yes, and most groups do. Skins sits on top of a nassau or a stableford without interfering, because it only needs each player's score on each hole, which you are writing down anyway.

What if someone picks up?

A player who does not hole out has no score on that hole and cannot win the skin. They do not stop anyone else winning it either, so the lowest score among the players who finished takes it.

Carries, rolls and handicap strokes worked out hole by hole, on one phone, while everyone else follows along free.