Nine point: the threesome's game

Most golf games are built for four players and fall apart with three. Nine point is built for exactly three, and it keeps all three in every hole.

Nine points are on offer each hole, split by finishing order: 5 to the best score, 3 to the middle, 1 to the worst. Over eighteen holes there are 162 points in play, and because even the worst score on a hole collects something, nobody is ever out of it.

The format is also called split sixes, which uses 4-2-0 instead of 5-3-1. The arithmetic is identical in spirit; nine point is more common because the guaranteed single point for last place keeps the totals closer and the game friendlier.

Tie splits

This is the only genuinely fiddly part, and it is worth knowing all four cases cold:

All three tie — 3 points each.
Two tie for best — they take 5 and 3 and split them: 4 each. The third player gets 1.
Two tie for worst — they split 3 and 1: 2 each. The winner takes 5.
One player wins outright, two tie behind — same as above: 5, 2, 2.

The totals always add to nine, which is a useful self-check. If your hole does not add to nine, you have made a mistake.

Gross or net

Use net scores unless all three players are within a shot or two of each other. Allocate handicap strokes by stroke index as usual — the difference method works well here: the lowest handicap plays off scratch and the other two receive the difference. With a 7, a 13 and a 19, the middle player gets 6 strokes and the third gets 12, on the hardest holes first.

Worked example

Three players at $1 a point, net scoring.

Hole 1 — nets of 4, 5, 5. Points: 5, 2, 2.
Hole 2 — nets of 3, 3, 5. Points: 4, 4, 1.
Hole 3 — nets of 4, 4, 4. Points: 3, 3, 3.

Running totals after three holes: 12, 9, 6. At $1 a point the leader is up $3 on the middle player and $6 on the last, and every hole moved the ledger — which is the whole appeal compared with a three-way Skins game where ties produce nothing at all.

Settlement options

Pairwise difference — each player pays the difference in totals to anyone above them. Fully zero-sum and the standard method.
Winner takes the spread — only the leader collects, from both others.
Nine-hole settlement — reset and settle at the turn, Nassau style, so a bad front nine does not decide the day.

The app records net scores per hole for every player, so a nine point tally is just a re-read of the card you already filled in — including the tie cases, which are where hand-kept nine point games go wrong.

Strategy

Second place matters here in a way it never does in Skins. The gap between 5 and 3 is two points; the gap between 3 and 1 is also two. So a safe par that guarantees you are not last is worth exactly as much as the risk that would have won you the hole outright. That makes nine point the most conservative of the common betting games — grind, avoid the worst score, and let the aggressive players in the group hand you points.

The exception is late in the round when you are behind. Then the only points that help are the fives, and you need to take on pins.

Playing it with four

If a fourth joins, you can extend to a 6-4-2-0 split, but the tie arithmetic gets tedious fast. Most groups switch to Wolf or Skins instead and keep nine point in reserve for the days someone cancels.