Match Skins vs. Group Skins: The Two Ways to Play Skins on a Golf Trip
Every buddy trip has a skins game. Usually it lives inside one cart — four guys, a few bucks a hole, and somebody keeping track on a tee sheet that gets rained on by the ninth.
But there are actually two ways to run skins on a trip: the classic match skins everybody knows, and group skins — a field-wide version most golfers have never heard of. If your trip has three, four, five, even six foursomes, group skins turns one side game into something the entire tournament is sweating over.
Here's how both work.
What is skins, anyway?
Skins is golf's oldest side game: every hole is worth something, and to win it you have to win the hole outright. Beat everybody. Tie anybody, and nobody gets it.
Where the two versions differ is who you're beating — and what happens when nobody wins.
Match skins: the one you already play
Match skins happens inside your own playing group — the foursome you're actually riding with.
- Every hole is worth one skin.
- The lowest score on the hole wins it — but only if it beats everyone else in the group outright.
- If two players tie for low score, the hole is halved and the skin carries over. Now the next hole is worth two skins. Another tie? Three.
The carryovers are where match skins gets loud. Nothing changes the energy of a cart like a par-3 that's suddenly worth five skins, and everybody knows it walking to the tee.
It's the perfect side game for the group you're playing with. But it stops at your cart — the other twelve guys on the trip are playing their own game, on their own holes, in their own world.
Group skins: the one you haven't played yet
Group skins runs across every group in the tournament at once. Four foursomes, sixteen players, one game.
Here's how it works:
- Everybody buys in. The group picks a number — say $20 each — and it all goes into one pot. Sixteen players at $20 is a $320 pot before anyone's hit a shot.
- Only birdies (or better) count. Pars win nothing in group skins, no matter how lonely they are.
- You have to be the only one. Make a birdie, and if nobody else in the entire field birdies that hole, you've won a skin. If two or more players birdie the same hole — it's a wash. No skin, no carryover, the hole just dies.
- There are no carryovers. That's the other big difference from match skins. A washed hole is gone; the value lives in the pot, not the hole.
How do group skins payouts work?
At the end of the round, count up every skin that was won, and divide the pot by that number. That's what one skin is worth. Everybody gets paid for exactly what they won.
Say the round produces ten skins: one guy snagged 5, two guys got 2 each, and one guy stole 1.
- Pot: 16 players × $20 = $320
- Skins won: 5 + 2 + 2 + 1 = 10
- Each skin is worth: $320 ÷ 10 = $32
The guy with 5 skins walks with $160. The one-skin guy covers his buy-in and a hot dog at the turn. Everyone else gets to hear about it at dinner.
Match skins or group skins — which should you play?
Wrong question. Play both.
Match skins keeps the pressure inside the cart — every hole, every carryover, right in your foursome. Group skins makes the whole field matter: a birdie on 14 isn't just beating your cart, it's beating all sixteen guys — including the ones three holes ahead who don't even know you're coming for their money.
The catch with group skins has always been the bookkeeping. Who birdied what? Did anyone in group three also birdie 7? Who's tallying skins across four scorecards at the bar?
Dormie does the math
Both games are built into Dormie. Match skins runs right inside your foursome's scoring, and group skins gets set up by the commissioner before the round starts — pick the buy-in, and you're done. As scores come in from every group, Dormie tracks who's holding skins, which holes washed, and what everything's worth — dollar values and payouts included, down to the cent.
Nobody's auditing scorecards at the 19th hole. The app already knows who's buying dinner.