What is a sandie in golf?

A sandie is making par or better on a hole where you were in a bunker. In the pool version every sandie is one share of a pot that all the entrants paid into.

Does a sandie have to be from a greenside bunker?

By tradition yes. Parful counts a bunker anywhere on the hole, so a club that only pays greenside saves records the marks that way.

Is a sandie gross or net?

Gross. A bogey from the sand with a handicap stroke on the hole is a net par but not a sandie.

How does Parful know I was in a bunker?

It does not read it from the strokes. The group marks the sand shot on the scorecard for that hole, or the club manager records who was in a bunker on each hole from the game card.

What is a casual sandies pool?

A pool that pays any bunker recovery, whatever the score. On Parful the club switches off the par-or-better rule when the pool is created.

Golf games

Parful runs this, with a caveat

Sandies

Q: How is the sandies pot split?

In proportion to sandies made: pot times your sandies divided by all sandies in the pool, rounded down to the cent, with the leftover cents to the top player.

Also called Sandie, Sandy, Sand save pool, Bunker saves.

Sandies is a side pot for bunker saves: a player earns a sandie by being in a bunker on a hole and still scoring gross par or better. Every sandie is one share of the pot. A casual version pays any hole where the player was in the sand at all.

Players: 2 or more, usually the whole field on an outing
Standard rule: In a bunker on the hole and gross par or better
Casual rule: Any hole with a bunker mark and a posted score
Scoring basis: Gross; handicap strokes do not apply
Bunker facts: Recorded per hole from the scorecard or by the manager
Payout: Pot split in proportion to sandies

How Sandies works

A sandie, or sandy, is the oldest of the feat bets: get in a bunker, get out, and still make your par. Every entrant pays a buy-in, every sandie made during the round is one share of the pot, and the shares are paid out at the end.

Parful's standard rule has two parts and both must hold on the same hole: the player was in a bunker, and the gross score was par or better. A 4 on a par 4 from the sand is a sandie; a 5 is not; a birdie 3 is. Handicap strokes are ignored, so a net par does not qualify. The bunker can be anywhere on the hole; Parful does not distinguish greenside from fairway, so a club that only pays greenside saves marks accordingly.

The casual rule drops the second part. With the par condition switched off any hole where the player was marked in a bunker and posted a score is a sandie, which suits a pool that wants to pay every escape rather than every save.

Where the bunker facts come from

A scorecard records strokes; it does not know who was in the sand. The bunker fact is captured separately, per hole, as a mark on each player, in one of two ways. The group answers the sand-shot prompt on its own scorecard hole by hole, the natural way when scoring live. Or the club manager records who was in a bunker on each hole from the pool's game card, which suits a club working from paper cards afterwards.

Either way one record covers each hole, and recording a hole again replaces its whole set of marked players. Marks on a player outside the pool are simply ignored. Once the outing is closed out the marks are frozen along with the scores.

Try it

Can we play Sandies in our format?

Derived from the same compatibility rules the scorecard uses, so it cannot drift from the product.

Own ball, individual
Available
Four-ball, best ball, counted scores
Available
Shamble, bramble, cha cha cha
Available
Scramble, foursomes, greensomes, chapman
Needs a fact (putts, fairway) a shared ball cannot supply

The pot and the split

The pot is the buy-in times the entrants who have paid, shown as an estimate until the first payment is recorded. At settlement each player's payout is the pot times their sandies divided by all sandies in the pool, rounded down to the cent, with the leftover cents going to the player at the top. A player with no sandies gets no line, and equal counts share the position and the slice.

How Parful runs it

A club manager adds Sandies from the outing's games panel, sets the buy-in, chooses the standard or casual rule and picks the audience: the whole outing, an opt-in list or one group. Members cannot start a Sandies pool from the group scorecard yet.

The pool recomputes whenever a score or a bunker mark changes: Parful lays the marks over a copy of each card, checks the gross score against par and counts the sandies. The official scorecard is never altered by a mark. At settlement Parful writes the payout lines and the organizer records each one as paid by cash, check, Venmo, Zelle or another method. Parful never moves money.

Sandies reads individual gross scores, so it runs wherever each player keeps their own card. The same engine supplies the sandie component of the Dots game.

Worked example

A worked example: eight entrants at $5, standard rule

Eight players enter at $5 and all eight pay, so the pot is $40. The par-or-better rule is on. These are the holes where anyone in the pool was marked in a bunker.

Hole	Par	Player	In a bunker	Gross	Par or better	Sandie
2	4	Ana	Yes	4	Yes	Yes
2	4	Ben	Yes	5	No	No
5	3	Cal	Yes	3	Yes	Yes
8	5	Ana	Yes	5	Yes	Yes
11	4	Dee	Yes	6	No	No
13	4	Ben	Yes	3	Yes	Yes
17	3	Cal	Yes	4	No	No
18	4	Ana	Yes	5	No	No

Four sandies: Ana 2, Ben 1, Cal 1. Each share is $40 ÷ 4 = $10, so Ana is paid $20.00, Ben $10.00 and Cal $10.00. Dee and the four players never marked in a bunker are paid nothing.

Ben's birdie from the sand on 13 is a sandie like any other; there is no bonus for beating par.
Under the casual rule every one of the eight marked holes counts: Ana 3, Ben 2, Cal 2, Dee 1, eight shares of $5 each.

Common variants

Casual sandies, any recovery: Every hole where the player was in a bunker and posted a score counts. Parful offers this as a setting when the pool is created.
Greenside only: Only a save from a greenside bunker counts; a fairway bunker does not. Parful does not distinguish the two, so a club playing this rule marks only greenside visits.
Net sandies: Par or better after handicap strokes. Parful counts gross scores only.
Sandies paid per hole: Each sandie is paid on the spot by everyone else in the group. Parful settles one pot at the end rather than hole-by-hole payments.