How to run a golf major pool (tiered draft format)

Golf majors are perfect for a pool. The whole field plays the same four rounds, the leaderboard moves all weekend, and you don't need to know golf deeply to have a rooting interest. The most popular and fairest format is a tiered draft, where everyone builds a team of golfers under the same constraints.

How the tiered format works

The commissioner sorts the field into tiers by strength — Tier A is the favorites (Scheffler, Rahm, McIlroy), Tier D is the long shots. Each player then drafts a set number of golfers from each tier, for example one from A, one from B, two from C, and two from D. Because everyone is forced to take long shots, nobody can simply stack the six best players in the world, and a sleeper pick from a deep tier can win you the whole thing.

Scoring: strokes vs. money

There are two common ways to score a golf pool. Strokes (score to par): add up your golfers' scores relative to par; lowest combined total wins. It's intuitive and easy to follow round by round. Prize money: add up the official winnings of your golfers; highest total wins. Money scoring naturally rewards picking players who finish high, but it can feel less transparent to casual players.

Strokes is the friendlier default for most groups. Decide which you're using before picks lock.

The cut and missed-cut golfers

After two rounds, roughly half the field misses the cut and goes home. Pools handle this differently: some carry a missed-cut golfer's score as-is, some apply a penalty, and some require a minimum number of your golfers to make the cut for your team to stay eligible. State your cut rule clearly — it's the most-asked question every tournament.

Tiebreakers

Ties are common in golf pools. A clean tiebreaker is countback: compare each tied team's best golfer, then their second-best, and so on, until one is ahead. If a real-tournament playoff decides the championship, some commissioners use the playoff result to break a pool tie between players whose top golfers are in that playoff. Whatever you choose, announce it before the final round — deciding a tiebreaker after you know who it helps is how disputes start.

Running it

Fields are usually finalized the Monday of tournament week, so open picks then and lock them at the first tee time on Thursday. Live scoring through the weekend is what makes a golf pool sing — watching your Tier D flier climb the leaderboard on Sunday is the entire appeal.