Skins and Rabbit for Your Golf Pool

The problem with a four-day golf pool is Friday afternoon. Half the pool has a missed cut, the leaderboard has sorted itself into contenders and everyone else, and the group chat goes quiet until Sunday. Side games fix that, and the two your Saturday foursome already plays - skins and the rabbit - translate to a pool almost unchanged. Every round becomes its own contest, with its own winner, that the last-place team can still take.

Skins, hole by hole

Same game as your Saturday foursome, scaled up: every hole is worth a skin and the lowest score takes it. Your team's score on a hole is your counted golfers' strokes added together - in a best-4-of-5 pool that's the four lowest, so four birdies on a par 4 is a 12. Low by yourself and the skin is yours; tie for low and nobody gets it. That's the whole rule, and it's why the skins that land are the memorable ones - the birdie on the brutal par 4, the eagle, the ace.

• Eighteen holes a round, so a round can settle none or eighteen. Most settle a handful.
• Nothing carries - not to the next hole, the next day, or next week. Each hole and each tournament stands alone.
• During play a hole is provisional until everyone in the game has played it; the round is scanned hole by hole once the last card is in.
• Payout: the pot divided by skins won. Twelve of the thirty skins settled that week is 40% of the pot.

The rabbit

The rabbit is loose on the first tee. Win a hole outright - low team score, no tie - and you catch it. If another team then wins a hole outright, the rabbit is set loose again; it never passes from one team to the next, it has to be caught. Whoever is holding it after the 9th wins the front nine, it's loose again on 10, and whoever holds it after 18 wins the back. Each round is its own chase, so a bad Thursday costs you nothing on Friday. It's simpler than skins and somehow more nerve-racking, because holding it into Sunday means every team in the pool is trying to take it off you, and a tie is enough.

Running them as a side pot

Side games work best as an optional buy-in - a few dollars per game, per tournament - because not everyone wants the extra action, and the people who do want it every week. That means the commissioner has three chores: record who's in each week, only count those teams, and keep a running tally. Do it on a spreadsheet and the third one dies by week three.

On Moving Day a commissioner switches skins and/or the rabbit on when creating the competition, sets the buy-in, and ticks who's in on a per-tournament checkbox grid as the money arrives (it moves between members and the commissioner, never through the app). The leaderboard then shows a Side Games card: each round's skin or carry, the live low while a round is in progress, the rabbit's holder, and the pot. Only bought-in teams count. Results land in the pool's History tab and on player profiles as “Skins Leader” and “Rabbit” titles. Details in Side Games.

Two house-rule decisions to make up front

• Carry or vanish? Some foursomes carry a tied skin to the next hole; Moving Day lets it vanish, so every hole stands on its own and there's never a jackpot hole that swings the week. Say which your group expects before Thursday.
• Everyone in, or opt-in? A family pool with a set group can put everyone in automatically and skip the bookkeeping. A bigger pool should be opt-in.