How the Back It Up golf game works

In traditional skins once you win a skin, you pocket it and that’s it. In Back It Up you can instead back up a skin, rather than pocket it.

Back It Up is a variation on the traditional skins game.

In skins each players competes for a set prize on every hole. This prize is the ‘skin’. The game is played as version of matchplay, and is suited to three- or fourball games.

Each hole is awarded a prize of a certain amount of money in advance of the round. It is customary for the sums of money to increase as the round progress.

In the traditional skins game the total value of the prizes is known in advance. For example you might play for £1 a hole on the front nine, and, £2 a hole on the back nine, the 18th which is worth, say £5. Thus the total amount of the skins to be won is £30.

You win a skin by wing the hole outright. If no-one wins the hole outright then the skin is rolled over to the next hole, added to the skin for that hole.

In traditional skins once you win a skin, you pocket it and that’s it. In Back It Up you can instead back up a skin, rather than pocket it.

If you back it up then the next skin is worth double if you win it, and the skin you had won, but laid on the next hole, is also worth double if you win it.

If another player wins the hole then just win the original value of the two holes.

Thus is our example above, a £1 a hole, and Alex wins the 1st hole and decide to back it up, he would be playing for two skins worth £2 each on the 2nd hole - the skin he won on the 1st and the one for the 2nd hole. If he wins it he gets £4.

But If Bert wins outright, Bert gets two skins worth £1 each, and Alex gets nothing, having now lost the skin he had won on the 1st.

If there is no outright winner of the hole, then each skin gets rolled forward to the next hole at its original value, thus in our example, the 3rd hole would have three skins riding on it, of £1 each, so a total of £3, regardless of who ultimately wins it.

It the concept of gambling what you have to get double rewards on winning the next hole it is similar to the Let It Ride golf game.