Absolut Cup 2026 · Seaview · September 16–18
The Rules
Everything that decides the Cup, in one place. Formats, points, carries, gambits, junk, how the matches are set and the one-man-down rule. If it isn’t on this page, it isn’t a rule.
The numbers, at a glance
01
The three days
Two courses, three days, and more than half the tournament decided on the last afternoon.
Opening Round
Seaview Pines · 18 holes
Two-man shamble, played as two nine-hole matches. Partners stay together all day — at the turn the carts stay put, the opponents change, and a new match begins.
The Marathon
Seaview Bay · 18 holes, then as far as the light allows
Alternate shot in the morning, played as two nine-hole matches. The afternoon is a scramble and runs as one continuous match — same partners, same opponents, no turn. The commissioner calls the closing hole as the last group plays.
Two-Front Battle
Seaview Pines · 18 holes
Two men to the Duel, four to the team scramble. Points multiply, and the Cup is settled.
A match is the unit that matters. Wednesday and Thursday morning are two nine-hole matches each. Thursday afternoon is a single match however long it lasts. Friday is one match per front.
02
How points are won
Every hole puts three points on the table, in two separate contests. You can win one and lose the other on the same green.
- The holeLower team score takes it. Format decides how the team score is arrived at.
- The puttsFewer team putts takes it. A ball holed from off the green counts as zero putts.
- TiesNeither category is lost when it is tied. The points carry — see below.
Split the three points evenly and every man finishes on 1.50 a hole. That is the line everything on this trip is measured against.
03
Carries: why no hole is ever wasted
If a category is tied on a hole, nothing is lost. Those points ride forward and stack on the next hole, and they keep stacking until somebody wins that category outright.
The two categories carry independently. The hole can be riding four deep while the putts have been settled every green.
Any points still riding when the match ends are split evenly between the two sides. That is true whether the match ends on its scheduled last hole or, on Thursday afternoon, wherever the commissioner stops it.
Eighty-four points on the eighteenth
Holes thirteen through seventeen of the championship 4v4 were all halved on the hole. At six times points, each one added another twelve to the pile. The putts halved on seventeen as well.
Both teams walked to the eighteenth tee with seventy-two points riding on the hole and twelve on the putts. Both made five. It halved, and the pile was split forty-two apiece.
04
Junk
Extra points on the par threes and par fives — closest to the pin and longest drive. Seven are available across a full eighteen and three in a nine.
Junk is never multiplied. A junk point is worth one point on Wednesday morning and one point on the eighteenth hole of Friday’s 4v4. The Friday weighting applies to the hole and the putts only.
05
Championship Friday
Everything changes on the last day. Each captain declares two men for the Duel and four for the team scramble on Thursday evening, and both declarations are revealed together.
| Friday match | The hole | The putts | Junk |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2v2 Duel — triple points | 6 | 3 | 1 |
| 4v4 Team Scramble — six times | 12 | 6 | 1 |
No gambits on Friday, in either match. No press, no chips, nothing. The multipliers are the stakes.
Friday carried 489 of the 923 points contested in 2025 — more than half the tournament in a single afternoon.
06
The formats
Two-Man Shamble
Both players tee off and the team takes the better drive. Each man then plays his own ball from that spot until holed. Team score is the lower of the two individual scores.
Two-Man Alternate Shot
One man tees off on the odd holes, his partner on the evens. From there they alternate every shot until the ball is holed. Penalty strokes do not change the order. Team score is total strokes.
A lost ball or one out of bounds does not send anybody back to the tee — see the rule below. The man whose turn it is simply drops and plays on.
Scramble
Everybody hits, the team picks the best shot, and everybody plays again from there. Repeat until holed. Team score is total strokes.
Where you play from: once the team picks its shot, everybody plays from within one club length of it, no nearer the hole. It is autumn and the ground is what it is, so take a decent lie. What the club length cannot do is move you somewhere better: no getting out of a bunker and no stepping into the fairway. If the picked ball is in the sand, everybody plays out of the sand. If it is in the rough, everybody stays in the rough.
On the green there is no movement at all. Mark the spot of the picked ball and everybody putts from that exact spot.
Lost ball and out of bounds
Nobody walks back and nobody plays a provisional. Take one penalty stroke and drop on the line where the ball went out or was lost, no nearer the hole. Then play on.
A drive that sails out of bounds costs a stroke and leaves the team playing its third from up near where the trouble was — not its third from the tee. In alternate shot the man whose turn it is takes the drop; the order is unchanged.
This covers lost balls and out of bounds only. Everything else plays under the normal penalty — water and staked penalty areas included.
07
Setting the matches
Pairings are set three times — once for Wednesday, once for Thursday morning, once for Thursday afternoon. Each time, a captain names three pairs from his six men and then the two captains build the matchups between them, in the open, one pair at a time.
Step one — the pairs are sealed
Each captain writes down his three pairings before anything is announced. Once the naming starts, they cannot be changed. A captain cannot rearrange his men after he sees who he is up against.
Step two — who names first
The team that won the Cup last year names first. Grit take the 2026 opener. If the teams have been redrawn and there is no defending side, a coin toss decides it. That is the only thing the toss decides — everything after it follows a fixed order.
Step three — building the three matches
Within a nine it goes like this:
- Match 1The naming team announces one of its pairs. The other captain answers with whichever of his pairs he wants to send at them. That match is now set.
- Match 2The captain who just answered now announces one of his two remaining pairs. The first captain answers from his two. That match is set.
- Match 3The two pairs left over play each other. Nobody chooses it.
Announcing first means you show your hand; answering means you get to pick the fight. Which is the better end of the deal is an argument that has never been settled.
Step four — the order alternates
The right to name first passes back and forth, match by match, all the way through Wednesday and Thursday.
| Match | Names first | Answers |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday — first nine | Grit | Glory |
| Wednesday — second nine | Glory | Grit |
| Thursday morning — first nine | Grit | Glory |
| Thursday morning — second nine | Glory | Grit |
| Thursday afternoon | Grit | Glory |
Thursday afternoon is one match, so it is selected once and played to the finish.
Two things you can never do
- No pairing twiceA pair that plays together on one set of pairings cannot be used again on another. Wednesday, Thursday morning and Thursday afternoon each need three different pairs. Every captain has to use his whole roster.
- No opponent twiceTwo pairs that have met each other cannot meet again for the rest of Wednesday and Thursday — not on the second nine, not the next day. Every match on the board is a new one.
Friday is different
No naming, no answering. Both captains secretly declare their two-man Duel team and their four-man scramble team, and the two declarations are revealed at the same moment. The no-repeat rules are lifted — any two men can play together and any two pairs can meet.
08
Gambits
Every pairing carries all four gambits into every match, and plays exactly one of them. Nothing is allocated and nothing is held back for you — the four are simply there, and the first one you call is the only one you get.
- One per matchA match is a nine on Wednesday and Thursday morning, so a pairing gets one gambit per nine. Thursday afternoon is a single match however long it runs, so a pairing gets one gambit for the whole afternoon. Spend it early and you have nothing left on the sixteenth.
- Wednesday and Thursday onlyThere are no gambits on Friday, in the Duel or the 4v4.
- One hole, one useA gambit applies to a single hole. Once it is called it is spent — whether the hole is won, lost or halved.
- Both sides can play oneTwo pairings can use a gambit on the same hole. You do not lose your chance because the other side called first, and neither of you has to say what you are doing before the other decides. The press is the exception — it has its own rules below, and only one side is ever eligible to play it.
- Nothing carries overAn unplayed gambit does not roll into the next match. If you did not use it, it is gone.
- Call it out loudTiming is on the players, not the app. Declare it, make sure the other side heard you, and then hit.
The Press
Doubles what the next hole is worth. Declared on the tee, before anybody hits.
Who can press: the side that lost the most recent hole decided on the hole itself — the putts do not count — and has not lost another since. If you are the side that just took a hole, you cannot press. Nobody can press the first hole of a match, because nobody has lost anything yet.
What it doubles: that hole’s base points only. The hole goes from two to four, the putts from one to two. It never doubles points already riding onto the hole — forty carried points are still forty — and it never doubles junk.
If the pressed hole is halved: only the original base carries forward. The doubled part disappears. The press is spent either way, and with it your gambit for the match.
Ride or Die
Declared on the tee, before anybody hits. The team names one player whose own ball becomes the money ball. To succeed, the team must use that player’s shot as the official ball on at least two separate strokes, and that same player must hit the shot that finishes the hole. If the money ball is lost, the gambit fails automatically. Succeed and the team takes one stroke off its score for the hole.
Putt for Dough
The team names one player to take all of its putting on the hole. He must hole the first putt, which has to be longer than a putter length. If he holes it, the hole counts as zero putts. If he misses, the team takes the number of putts actually played.
This changes the putts and nothing else. Your score for the hole is whatever you actually made. A four that included that one made putt is still a four — it is recorded as a four with zero putts, not a three.
Mulligan to the Rescue
Declared after the team has completed all its own shots for a given stroke — after all the drives, for instance. There is no need to wait for the opposition. The named player immediately plays one additional shot, and the team must use that shot, abandoning everything it played for that stroke.
Enter what you actually shot. The app applies the gambit — do not do the maths yourself. See Keeping score below.
09
One man down
If a side is short, the remaining player plays on alone. He hits two drives and selects the better, then plays out under the format’s normal rules. The match counts in full.
Mad Dog missed the tournament, so Dave played four matches by himself and Z played one. Grit also contested the championship 4v4 with three men against Glory’s four.
Dave went 3–1 alone, including a 23–6 win in alternate shot — the heaviest scoreline of the week. Across all five short-handed matches the one-man side was up 24 points over 45 holes. Being a man down was not, on the evidence, a handicap.
10
Keeping score
- The app is the recordScores go in on the hole they are played. The first score entered stands; accidental duplicates are discarded.
- CorrectionsA wrong entry can be corrected on the spot. No reason required, just a confirmation.
- Paper backs it upKeep the card as well. If the two disagree, the group settles it before leaving the green.
- JunkCalled and agreed on the hole, not reconstructed in the bar afterwards.
- GambitsDeclared out loud and entered on the hole they are played.
Enter what you shot, not what it counts for
Ride or Die and Putt for Dough both change what a hole is worth. Do not apply that yourself. Put in the real numbers and the app does the rest.
Putt for Dough: you make a four with one putt, you enter a four and one putt. The app scores it as zero putts.
Ride or Die: you make a five and the gambit succeeds, you enter a five. The app scores it as a four.
Adjust the numbers at entry and the app will adjust them again. Enter the truth and the scoreboard takes care of itself.
What changed for 2026. The press is no longer a rule of its own — it is one of four gambits, and every pairing carries all four into every match and plays one. In 2025 there were three different versions of the chip rules published on this site, one chip was played all week, and nobody pressed at all. There is one version now, it is on this page, and there are four things to reach for.
Where this page and anything older disagree, this page wins. Rulings on the day are the commissioner’s.