The oldest bet in golf and still the most common. Lose the front nine and you have not lost the day — you have lost a third of it, and there are two bets left to win. That is the whole appeal, and the press is what stops the losing side going quiet.
THE SHORT ANSWER
A Nassau is three separate bets on one round: the front nine, the back nine, and the overall eighteen. Each is a match play bet worth the same stake, so a “$10 Nassau” puts $30 on the day. Holes are won by the lower score, tied holes are halved, and a tied nine is a push — nobody pays. A losing side can also press, opening a new bet over the holes that are left.
THE FRONT NINE · A PRESS
two bets, one nine
Orange 2 down · thru 4
Orange presses+$5 on 5–9
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
front nine · $10
the press · $5
Blue wins the nine by one −$10Orange takes the press +$5
Orange loses the 1st and the 3rd and is two down after four.
A press opens a second bet over the five holes left — and orange wins it.
The nine still went to blue. Orange is only $5 down instead of $10.
3
bets, one round
2 or 4
golfers
2 down
and a press fires
~5
min to learn
The rules
Two golfers, or two pairs playing better ball. You agree one stake and it applies three times over: once for the front nine, once for the back nine, and once for the eighteen as a whole. All three run at the same time from the same scores, which is why a “$10 Nassau” is a $30 day and gets described as ten, ten and ten.
Each of the three is decided as ordinary match play. Lower score takes the hole, level scores halve it, and the side ahead when the nine runs out wins that bet. A tied nine pays nothing at all — there is no countback and nothing rolls forward.
1
Front nine
Holes 1 to 9, its own bet, settled at the turn.
2
Back nine
Holes 10 to 18, starting level again whatever happened on the front.
3
The overall
All eighteen holes as one continuous match, running underneath the other two.
The one rule people forget
The overall is not the two nines added together. It is its own eighteen-hole match, so a side can win the front, lose the back, and still take the overall — or win both nines by one and win the overall by two. Groups regularly settle the overall by counting up which nines were won, and that is the single most common Nassau mistake.
The press
A press is a new bet, opened mid-nine by the side that is losing, running over the holes that are left. The original bet carries on exactly as it was. It does not double the stake and it does not wipe out the deficit — it just puts a fresh, shorter match alongside the one already lost.
That is the point of it. Two down with five to play is a bet most golfers have mentally given up on; two down with five to play and a live five-hole match is a golfer still trying on the 7th tee.
Automatic, at two down
The common modern rule and the one worth defaulting to: the moment a side goes two down in a nine, a press opens over the rest of that nine. Nobody has to ask for it, which removes the awkwardness — and nobody can forget to.
2 down
it just fires
Manual — the losing side asks
The traditional version. Only the side that is down may press, and the other side cannot refuse. It keeps the decision as part of the gamesmanship, and it means a side can hold the press back for a stretch of holes that suits them.
On ask
down only
What a press is worth
Usually less than the main bet, because there are fewer holes in it.
On a $10 Nassau, $5 a press is the usual choice. It matters because presses compound: a side can go two down in a nine, press, then go two down in the press as well, and a group that has not agreed a ceiling can find four or five live bets running at once. If presses are automatic, agree a cap on the day — a maximum any side can lose — before the first tee.
Scoring, worked all the way through
A $10 Nassau with automatic presses at $5. Blue against orange, better ball, net scores.
The front nine
$10, plus a $5 press
Blue takes the 1st and the 3rd, so orange is two down after four and the press fires over holes 5 to 9. Orange wins the 5th and the 6th to level the nine, but blue takes the 8th. So the press — which only counts holes 5 to 9 — finishes one up to orange, while the nine itself goes to blue by one.
THE NINE
Blue, 1 up
blue +$10
THE PRESS
Orange, 1 up
orange +$5
The back nine
$10, no press
Level again from the 10th. Orange wins the 12th, blue wins the 15th, and everything else is halved, so the nine finishes all square. Neither side ever goes two down, so no press opens.
THE NINE
All square
a push — nobody pays
THE PRESS
none
never two down
The overall
$10
Counted straight through from the 1st, and this is the bet groups get wrong. Blue won four holes across the round — the 1st, 3rd, 8th and 15th — and orange won three: the 5th, 6th and 12th. Blue is one up over the eighteen, so blue takes the overall. Note that the back nine was a push and the front was won by a single hole: added together the nines say almost nothing, and the overall still had to be counted on its own.
HOLES WON
4 – 3
eleven holes halved
THE BET
Blue, 1 up
blue +$10
SETTLED, ALL FOUR BETS
Front nine
Blue $10
The press
Orange $5
Back nine
Push
Overall
Blue $10
Blue collects $15 for the day. Four bets, one of them a push, and every bet that paid was decided by a single hole. The press did its job: without it orange would be $20 down instead of $15.
A tied nine
All square after nine holes and the bet is simply a push: no money changes hands, no countback, nothing carried into the next nine. It happens often — a nine full of halved holes is the most common outcome in match play — and it is worth saying out loud on the first tee, because it is the thing groups quietly assume works differently.
Keep it a push. The alternatives all sound reasonable and all make the day worse: pushing the stake into the next nine turns a flat front into a doubled back, and settling a tie on the eighteenth hole means the front nine is not really its own bet at all — which was the entire reason for playing a Nassau.
House rules worth agreeing on the first tee
None of these is wrong. Pick before you tee off, because every one of them changes who wins.
Presses: none, manual, or automatic?
No presses is the quiet game, and there is nothing wrong with it. Manual keeps the decision with the losing side. Automatic at two down is the liveliest and also the fairest, because it never depends on who remembered to ask. Groups that want both let a side press by hand on top of the automatic one, which is where the money starts to run.
Handicaps, or straight up?
Gross is simplest and favours the good player. Strokes off the low man is the better way to play handicaps in match play: the best player gets nothing, everyone else plays the difference, and the strokes land on the hardest holes. Nassau tolerates handicaps better than most games because a stroke shades a match rather than deciding a pot outright.
Is there a ceiling on the day?
With automatic presses there is no natural limit — presses can open on top of presses, so the exposure is not the $30 anyone had in mind. Capping what a side can lose is the fix, and a side already at the cap should not be allowed to press, because a free bet is not a bet.
Two golfers, or two pairs?
Singles is the original. In a four-ball each side counts its better net ball, which is the version most groups play — and it makes the halved hole even more common, so pushes go up and presses fire less often than you would expect.
Scoring a Nassau without doing the arithmetic
A plain Nassau is easy enough to hold in your head. A Nassau with automatic presses is not, and that is the honest reason this game needs help: every hole you are updating three match states at once, and each one can spawn another bet that starts from level on a different hole. By the 14th there can be five live bets, each with its own start point, its own stake and its own margin — and the man keeping it on the card is also trying to play golf.
Halved does that part. You post gross scores. It applies the strokes, tracks all three matches, opens presses the moment a side goes two down, and shows every live bet with what it is currently worth.
Presses open by themselves
At two down, over the holes that are left, with nobody having to remember.
Every live bet, with its number
Front, back, overall and each press, so nobody is guessing what is still in play.
The cap is enforced
Set a maximum loss and a side at it cannot press, so the day stays the size you agreed.
Set it up once
The stake each of the three matches is worth, and the press unit as its own number.
The press, when it happens
The chip names the press that just opened, and F9, B9 and overall stand side by side.
Know where you stand
Three matches, every press with the holes it covers, and what each one is worth.
Play the Nassau. Let something else track the presses.
Free for the group, no card to enter, and the settlement is done before you get to the car park.
Thirty dollars if you lose all three bets, which is where the phrase “ten, ten and ten” comes from. With automatic presses there is no fixed answer — each press adds another bet on top — so if presses are on, agree a maximum for the day before you tee off.
What is a press in golf?
A new bet opened by the side that is losing, played over the holes still to come in that nine. The original bet is unaffected and runs to the end of the nine as normal, so pressing does not recover the deficit — it gives the losing side a second, shorter match to win alongside it.
Can you win both nines and lose the Nassau?
Not the overall — if you are ahead on both nines you are ahead across the eighteen. But you can certainly win a nine and end the day down, because a press you lost and an overall you lost can add up to more than the nine you won. That is why the overall has to be scored as its own match rather than inferred from the two nines.
Why is it called a Nassau?
It is named after the Nassau Country Club on Long Island, where the three-part format was adopted in the early 1900s. The usual story is that it let a club report a single modest result for an inter-club match rather than an embarrassing overall margin, though as with most golf origin stories the details vary with the telling.
