Stop Doing the Math in the Parking Lot
Settle Up Golf tracks every bet, calculates every payout, and tells you exactly who owes what — so you can focus on your game.
The most fundamental way to score golf — count every shot, lowest total wins. Here's how stroke play works and how to make it interesting.
Stroke play is the most straightforward scoring format in golf: every shot counts, and the player with the lowest total score at the end of the round wins. That's it. Add up all your strokes across all 18 holes, compare totals, and the lowest number takes the prize.
It's the format you see every week on the PGA Tour. It's the format used in most amateur club championships. And it's almost certainly the format you played when you first picked up a club. Stroke play is golf in its purest, most unambiguous form — there's no hole-by-hole reset, no concessions, and no partial credit for coming close. Every shot from the first tee to the final putt goes on your card.
This simplicity is stroke play's greatest strength. Anyone can understand it, scores are directly comparable, and the best golfer on the day always wins. It's also what makes betting on stroke play easy to explain to anyone in the group.
When you add a bet to stroke play, the first decision you need to make is whether to play gross or net.
Gross score is your raw total — every stroke you actually took, with no adjustments. Gross competitions reward pure ball-striking and are the right call when all players are at roughly the same skill level.
Net score is your gross total minus your full handicap. If you shoot 92 and carry a 16 handicap, your net score is 76. Net scoring levels the field so that a 20-handicapper has a genuine chance of beating a scratch golfer on any given day.
For casual group betting with mixed-ability players, net stroke play is almost always the fairer choice. Without handicap adjustment, the low-handicap players win every time and half the group stops caring after the front nine. Understanding how golf handicaps work goes a long way toward making your group's bets feel fair to everyone.
One practical note: if players don't have official USGA/WHS handicap indexes, your group will need to agree on playing handicaps before teeing off. Even rough self-reported indexes are better than playing gross when skill gaps are large.
The simplest stroke play bet is a flat wager on the lowest net score for the round. Everyone puts in the same amount, and the lowest net total takes the pot. Ties are typically split or carried over, depending on what your group agrees before teeing off.
You can also bet on margin of victory — for example, $1 per stroke of difference between players. If Player A nets 74 and Player B nets 78, Player B owes Player A $4. This approach scales naturally with how much better (or worse) someone plays and adds a bit more drama to every hole late in the round.
A common structure for four-player groups is to bet on three separate results: the front nine, the back nine, and the overall 18-hole total. This is the foundation of the Nassau format, which wraps those three bets into one tidy framework. Nassau remains one of the most popular betting formats in casual golf precisely because it creates three separate opportunities to win or lose money, keeping interest high even if one nine goes badly.
Stroke play betting doesn't have to be every man for himself. Team formats are just as common and often more fun.
Individual stroke play is straightforward: each player's net score stands on its own, and the field is ranked from lowest to highest. Great for competitive groups where everyone wants their own score to matter.
2v2 best ball is one of the most popular team variants. Two players form a team and on each hole, the team counts only the lower of the two net scores. The team's total is compared against the opposing team's total. Best ball rewards consistency — a bad hole from one partner is erased by a good hole from the other, making the format more forgiving and often leading to lower combined scores than either player would post individually.
Scramble takes team play even further. All players on a team tee off, the team picks the best drive, then all players hit from that spot, and so on until the ball is holed. Scramble produces aggressive, low-scoring rounds and works especially well for charity events or groups with wide skill gaps, since the weakest player's bad shots can always be set aside.
The most important distinction to understand before betting is the difference between stroke play and match play. They look similar — both involve hitting a golf ball around a course — but the betting implications are very different.
In stroke play, every single shot matters. A triple bogey on hole 3 doesn't just lose that hole; it permanently damages your total score and puts you at a disadvantage for the rest of the round. One bad hole can effectively end a player's chances of winning.
In match play, scores reset on every hole. Win the hole by making a birdie, and it doesn't matter whether your opponent made a bogey or a snowman — you win 1 hole either way. This means a player who makes a quadruple bogey on one hole hasn't lost the round, just that hole. Match play allows for remarkable comebacks and keeps every hole individually meaningful regardless of what happened before.
The strategic differences are real too. In stroke play, you play conservatively to avoid big numbers. In match play, you sometimes gamble aggressively on a long putt because you're already down and need the hole. If your group wants more drama and hole-by-hole tension, match play (or a match-play hybrid like Nassau) often delivers it better than stroke play alone.
Once you've decided on gross vs. net and individual vs. team, there are several well-established formats for structuring the actual bet:
Settle Up Golf supports stroke play betting in two modes: individual (each player competes on their own net score) and 2v2 team best ball (two teams of two, counting the lower net score per hole per team).
When you set up a stroke play bet in the app, you can set separate wagers for the front nine, back nine, and overall 18-hole total — so you get the full Nassau structure automatically. The app calculates net scores using each player's course handicap, tracks running totals hole by hole, and shows you exactly who's up or down at any point in the round. At the end, it generates a complete payout breakdown so there's no argument about who owes what.
You can run stroke play alongside other games in the same round — it's common to add a skins game on top of a stroke play bet, or to combine stroke play with a match play side bet between specific players. The app handles all of it simultaneously and keeps the settlements straight.
Stroke play is the bedrock of golf competition for good reason: it's honest, clear, and gives every shot equal weight. Whether you're running a simple low-net bet for five dollars or structuring a full Nassau with presses, a solid understanding of stroke play gives you the foundation to run any golf competition with confidence.
Settle Up Golf tracks every bet, calculates every payout, and tells you exactly who owes what — so you can focus on your game.