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 a club admin 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.

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

Any player in the outing adds Sandies from the outing page: pick it, give it a name if you like, choose the standard or casual rule, choose whether everyone playing is in or players opt in, and start it. A club admin can start, edit or remove the pool from the outing's Competitions & games tab, under Games.

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.

• infoBen's birdie from the sand on 13 is a sandie like any other; there is no bonus for beating par.
• infoUnder 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.

Related terms

• Game

  Greenies

  Greenies is a par-3 side pot: on each par 3 the player whose tee shot finishes closest to the hole wins a greenie, and the pot is shared out by greenies won. On Parful a greenie is a closest-to-the-pin contest with a recorded winner.

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• Game

  Birdie Pool

  A Birdie Pool is a whole-field side pot where every entrant pays a buy-in and the pot is shared out by birdies made: each gross birdie is one share, the player with the most birdies takes the biggest slice, and a club can count an eagle as two birdies.

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• Game

  Dots

  Dots is a golf side game that awards points, called dots, for feats during the round rather than for the score: a birdie, an eagle, a sandie (par or better after being in a bunker) and a greenie (closest to the pin on a par 3). Each feat is worth a set number of dots and the most dots wins.

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• Game

  Game facts: putts, fairways, bunkers, penalties and hole events

  Game facts are what happened on a hole beyond the score: putts, fairway hit or missed, a bunker, penalty strokes, and the hole calls for first on the green, closest once all are on, first in the hole and who took the Snake. Parful captures each fact once on the group scorecard and every game reads the same record.

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• Game

  Trouble

  Trouble is a side game that counts the bad things: one point for every three-putt, one point for every hole with a bunker shot, and one point for every penalty stroke. The fewest trouble points at the end of the round wins. Parful counts only what the group records and never guesses.

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• Handicap

  Gross and net scores

  Your gross score is the strokes you actually took. Your net score is that number minus the handicap strokes you received. Gross decides who played best on the day; net decides who played best relative to their ability, which is the only way golfers of different standards can compete.

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Sandies questions