2024 Golf One And Done Strategy: Maximize Pick Upside To Win Your Pool
BetspertsGolf
2 years ago
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Strategy for PGA Golf One And Done pools is complicated and subject to the high degree of variance inherent in the game of golf. At the same time, our data-driven research of these pools reveals tactics for pick selection that will give you a clear edge over your pool competitors.
First, let’s clarify the key rules of these games. Under the most typical rules of Golf One And Done pools, you have to pick one golfer each week, but you can only pick a specific golfer once per season. Scoring is typically based on the total prize money won by the golfers you pick.
After analyzing the implications of this rule system and studying historical data sets on player picks and pool results, we’ve identified a number of different strategy angles for getting an edge, which you can read about in our full article on Golf One And Done Strategy.
In this piece, we’ll take a deep dive into one particular strategy factor that makes a huge difference in One-and-done pools: tournament purse sizes. If you want to give yourself the best chance to leapfrog your competitors in your pool standings, then you need to pick the best golfers in tournaments where they will win you the most money if they succeed.
Purse-Based Pick Strategy: The Two Tiers Of Tournaments In One And Done Pools
In Golf One And Done pools, there’s essentially a game within a game. Depending on which tournament your pool starts and ends with, roughly half of the tournaments included will feature purse sizes that are much greater than the other half of the tournaments included. (Let’s call these the “top-tier” tournaments/events.)
It’s a pretty safe bet that these top-tier tournaments will determine who wins your One And Done pool because hitting the tournament winners in these events is far more valuable.
As you can see on our 2024 PGA schedule of tournaments, the largest purse events generally approach $20 million or more in total prize purse and award over $3.5 million to the first-place winner. Meanwhile, the other tournaments are all below $10 million in total purse and award at most $1.7 million to the first-place winner. So, the top-tier tournaments carry a potential reward that is more than double most of the second-tier events.
Those top-tier events include:
- The four Majors and The Players Championship
- Nine different “Signature Events” designated by the PGA Tour that have limited fields in 2024
- FedEx Cup Playoff Events at the end of the summer, which are also limited field events
Top-tier tournaments are extremely important for Golf One And Done pools. Yet our research shows that it’s not uncommon for players to pick the best golfers in some of the lower-tier tournaments, thus surrendering upside in a contest where you need to hit some home runs in order to win it all.
When To Avoid Using A Top Golfer As Your One And Done Pick
One of the primary temptations behind picking a top golfer in a second-tier tournament is that their chances of winning the event are relatively high (for golf, at least) compared to their odds of winning a more lucrative tournament.
That’s because a lot of the top golfers will play more sparingly in the second-tier events as they manage their schedules and take weeks off to prioritize the Majors and the bigger purse events. So when they do play in one, they typically face a significantly weaker field than they face in a top-tier event in which all of the top 10 golfers on tour (and most of the top 50) are playing.
But in the case of Golf One And Done pools, you typically want to resist the temptation to chase these relatively higher outright win odds in second-tier tournaments. In terms of helping your odds to win your pool, having a 5% chance to win a top-tier event is better than having a 10% chance to win a smaller-purse tournament.
Why? Because there’s a 0% chance of winning over $2 million by picking a top golfer if you don’t use them in a top tier tournament while picking them in a top tier event can give you a 5% chance to bank $3.6 million or more in prize money. And it’s big wins that propel One And Done pool victories.
Even a second-place finish in one of the Majors or Signature Events will still typically yield over $2 million in prize money, more than winning a second-tier tournament. Even a third-place finish at one of the top events, like the Genesis Invitational, might earn nearly as much as a first-place finish at a smaller-purse event like the Phoenix Open this year.
One And Done Strategy Case Study: Jon Rahm Last Season
To help understand the value of a purse-based pick strategy, let’s use the example of One And Done player picks on Jon Rahm during the 2023 PGA Season.
In total, during that season, Rahm won four tournaments, finished as a runner-up in two others, plus had one third-place finish. So he finished highly in multiple tournaments, but not all of them equally benefited the One And Done players who picked him.
Here’s a list of the prize money Rahm won across all of his top-three finishes:
| Event | Finish | Prize Money |
| Genesis Invitational | 1st | $3,600,000 |
| The Masters | 1st | $3,240,000 |
| Sentry Tournament of Champions | 1st | $2,700,000 |
| The American Express | 1st | $1,440,000 |
| WM Phoenix Open | 3rd | $1,380,000 |
| The Open | 4-way tie for 2nd | $1,084,625 |
| Mexico Open | 2nd | $839,300 |
If you had picked Rahm in your One And Done pool for the American Express or Mexico Open, you ended up with a seemingly good result. But it probably cost you in terms of your overall chance to win your pool because Rahm won significantly more money at three other events; at least some of your pool competitors likely picked him in those events.
We examined the top 50 scoring entries in a One And Done pool last year that had over 1,500 entries. Jon Rahm only played in three second-tier purse events all year and did about as well as you could possibly hope in those events (a first, second, and seventh-place finish).
Still, if you simply looked at whether an entry in this pool picked Rahm in a top-tier tournament or second-tier one, here were the results in terms of the entry’s odds of finishing in the top 50:
Picked Rahm in Top-tier event: 3.7% finished in the top 50
Picked Rahm in Second-tier event: 1.7% finished in the top 50
And if you knew that an entry successfully picked Rahm in the Genesis Invitational or The Masters, the odds of placing top 50 in this very large One And Done pool shot up to over 12%.
In fact, the number of entries that still finished in the top 50 despite picking Rahm in the 2023 Players Championship (an event where he withdrew due to injury and won $0) was 1.8%—still higher than the odds of placing in the top 50 by picking him in a lower purse event.
Admittedly, this is a rough analysis and may conflate some correlation and causation; for example, a player who picks Rahm in a second-tier tournament may be a less skilled One-and-Done player in general and pick suboptimally across other weeks as well. But it helps show the importance of picking top golfers when they can have the biggest impact.
2024 Pick Strategy: The Most Valuable Golfers In One And Done Pools
Finally, we’ll close with the top eight PGA Tour golfers in our PoolGenius rankings as we start the 2024 PGA season. For now, we are excluding LIV golfers, such as Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka, in these rankings, though we do have them ranked within our tools when they do appear in tournaments. That’s because the LIV golfers are only eligible to play in the Majors and not in PGA tournaments, so you do not have to make a decision on whether or not to pick them for a top-tier tournament.
Here are the top eight golfers we would plan to save only for higher purse events in 2024, with the understanding this article was published in early January, and that these rankings can and will change as the 2024 PGA season progresses.
(The number in parentheses is our “Strokes Gained” rating for each golfer as of January 9th, 2024.)
1. Scottie Scheffler (+2.4): Last year’s Player of the Year, Scheffler won the Phoenix Open and the Players Championship, did not miss a single cut and finished in the top 5 in nine of the 15 Majors/Signature Events.
2. Viktor Hovland (+2.3): Hovland won the Memorial and then won the BMW Championship and the overall FedEx Playoffs at the TOUR Championship.
3. Rory McIlroy (+2.2): Rory’s only win in 2023 came at the Scottish Open, but he also finished 2nd at the US Open and Arnold Palmer Invitational and closed strong in July and August.
4. Xander Schauffele (+2.0): Schauffele has been consistent, making the cut in every event last year. He did not win a tournament in 2023 but is fully capable of a hot streak, as he won three tournaments the year before.
5. Patrick Cantlay (+2.0): His last win came at the BMW Championship two years ago, but Cantlay had a second-place finish at St. Jude and was consistently in contention, finishing top 10 in nine of his last 17 tournaments played.
6. Max Homa (+1.9): 33-year-old Homa has hit his stride in recent years, winning five tournaments in the last three seasons and posting a sixth and fifth-place finish at last year’s first two FedEx playoff events.
7. Collin Morikawa (+1.9): The 26-year-old Morikawa is one of the PGA’s young stars and won The Open Championship back in 2021. After a somewhat disappointing summer stretch, he also won the ZOZO Championship in October 2023.
8. Tyrell Hatton (+1.7): Hatton hasn’t won on the PGA Tour since 2020 but finished as runner-up at the Players Championship to Scheffler last year, one of his four top-six finishes in higher purse tournaments last season. He has made the cut in 37 of his last 40 PGA events.
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