What is a sandie?
A sandie is golf's reward for anyone who refuses to let a bunker ruin the hole. Find the sand but still scrape together par or better and you have made a sandie, and the rest of the group has to pay up. It is a classic side bet that turns even a visit to the bunker into something to hope for.
How to play
- Agree a stake per sandie before the round.
- If you were in a bunker during the hole and make par or better, that is a sandie.
- For every sandie, each other player pays you the stake.
- Several players can make a sandie on the same hole, and each one gets paid.
How it is worked out
Sandies are counted live, hole by hole. Every time you mark that you saved par out of the sand, the money moves straight away: you up by the stake times the number of playing partners, each of them down by the stake. That means a player with a couple of good bunker saves can finish up on the side bet on their own.
Wager Golf keeps track of which holes you were in a bunker and counts sandies automatically, so there is no need to argue about who imagined that lie on the 7th.
A worked example
Say there are four of you and you set the value at 25 per sandie. Every sandie is paid by every opponent, so by three people.
Erik finds the greenside bunker on the 4th, splashes out and holes the putt for par. That is a sandie. The other three pay him 25 each, so Erik collects 75 on that hole. On the 12th he is in the sand again and saves par once more. A new sandie, another 75.
After the round it looks like this:
- Erik: two sandies, +150 (75 × 2)
- The other three: 50 each to Erik (25 × 2 sandies)
Three players paying 50 each is exactly the 150 coming in to Erik. It balances out. If others in the group make sandies of their own, the amounts offset each other and the net is what shows up at the end.
Wager Golf keeps track of which holes each player was in a bunker, counts sandies as you go, then works out the final balance and shows who owes whom.